


Let's Go Steal a One-Time Thing

by fardareismai



Series: Let's Go Steal Ourselves a Happy Ending [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Heist fic, I just couldn't help myself, Multi Chapter, Slow Burn, emma and august friendship, emma and mulan friendship, emma and zelena friendship, leverage 'verse, occasional political themes, this may be the slowest burn i've ever done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-11-13 20:16:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11192631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: A Hacker (Information Specialist), a Hitter (Security Specialist), a Thief (Retrievals Specialist), a Grifter (Social Specialist), and a goal.All that's needed now is an honest person to show them how to reach it.





	1. Grifter, Hacker, Hitter, Thief

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhoLockGal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhoLockGal/gifts).



> **This story is a gift to my favorite person in the world: WhoLockGal, whose birthday it is today.  Because I love her best of all, she gets yet another story from me that combines two of our fandoms in a weird way, this time it's _Leverage_ and _Once Upon a Time_.**
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> **If you haven't watched Leverage, 1) that's definitely a thing you should do, 'cause it's AWESOME, and 2) I think you'll probably still be able to follow this story, though you might miss a few references, I think the story holds up on its own.**
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> **Though it wasn't originally intended, this story also goes out with all my love to the inimitable Coworker, WLG's and my friend, who can never find CS stories that heavily feature Zelena, who is her fave.  It's an odd niche, but I like to hope I've managed to fill it!**
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> **Think of this first chapter as a teaser- the kind of thing you get before the title sequence to be sure you come back from the first commercial break.  The more comprehensive chapter will come on Friday, as my usual update.**
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> **(And yes, before anyone asks, this _will_ become a 'verse!  I already have the next few stories worked out in my head.  'Cause of course I need two crossover 'verses running at the same time, who says I don't?)**
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> **Happiest of happy birthdays, WLG, since I wasn't able to find you a Killian/Luke hybrid for your birthday, I hope you'll accept this poor substitute gift.**

Grifter

_August Booth_

**Codename** : Pinocchio

**Position** : Grifter/Conman

**Record** : Ages 4-13 in Child Protective Services. Wanted in France, Luxembourg, Brussels, Singapore, and India for various crimes.

**Reputation/Rumor** : Can tell any lie. Can become any character.

**Notes** : Works alone.

The room erupted in cheers as he accepted the oversized cheque for $750,000 written by the attendees of the gala for research to find a cure for a disease that did not exist.

August gritted his teeth behind his smile. Sometimes he missed the glamour and romance of art theft. Conning a single rich man out of a painting or sculpture had a charm and style that was missing in these cold, corporate grifts he'd taken to in recent years.

That said, it was efficient. No fence, no forger, no black-market dealings, just money. Even after he paid the venue and caterer for this one, he'd have another half a million dollars in his Cayman Islands bank before the bars closed tonight.

It was a living.

As the crowd turned its attention away from him and back toward the food, drink, and dance, August's phone went off in his pocket. His eyebrows shot up his forehead to see the name flashing up from the phone's face, and he didn't allow a full second ring before he answered it.

"Emma Swan, as I live and breathe. What's a white-hat like you doing calling an old crook like me?"

For the first time all night, his smile was genuine.

~?~?~?~?~

Hacker

_Zelena_

**Codename** : W1ck3d

**Position** : Information expert/Hacker

**Record** : Ages 0-13, British Child Protective Services. Wanted in England, France, Canada, Iceland, Cayman Islands for securities crimes.

**Reputation/Rumor** : Hacked NSA/CIA/MI6 in a single night from a secondhand laptop while still in foster care.

**Notes** : Works alone.

One could be forgiven for assuming that the old farmhouse past the edge of town was a derelict from the outside. It looked the sort of place that would topple in the next strong wind.

In reality, it'd been built to withstand a cyclone and the unprepossessing exterior was carefully maintained by the ginger-haired woman who sat on the porch, watching the quintessential Americana of the swaying cornfields that surrounded her.

Zelena was bored- stultifying in Kansas. It wasn't as though she needed to work- her predictive algorithm for the stock market kept her money moving and growing at such a rate that she didn't even bother watching it anymore. Even if the stock market crashed tomorrow and took every electronic cent she had with it, her nest egg currently held in several Swiss bank accounts would keep her comfortably for a century or two.

No, Zelena didn't need to work, she wanted to. She hadn't had a decent challenge in months. Ever since Edward had proven to be a Russian shill, she'd had a bad taste in her mouth for political espionage, but everything else was too easy.

Her phone went off, and Zelena glanced down at the readout. It was an iPhone, but Steve Jobs probably wouldn't have recognized the poor thing. She'd added to its power as well as its computing capability and memory, and now it was something of a promethean monster. It could accept calls from seven different lines, and had nearly as much computing and hacking power as a standard off-the-shelf laptop.

The number lighting up her screen was given to very few people- only those to whom she owed a favor.

"Hello Pinocchio," she said, lifting the phone to her ear. She didn't like August per se, but he'd gotten her out of a scrape once before, and Zelena always paid her debts. Besides that, the old liar led an interesting life, and hadn't she just been wishing for a challenge? "What trouble have you gotten yourself into this time?"

~?~?~?~?~

Hitter

_Fa Mulan_

**Codename** : None

**Position** : Security

**Record** : None

**Reputation/Rumor** : Subject is believed to be a myth told to frighten new recruits to the FBI and CIA.

**Notes** : If subject exists, works alone.

The tiny Asian woman sitting at the end of the long, filthy bar should have looked out of place among the rough, criminal and ex-military types that populated it, but she did not. There was something in the set of her shoulders and the dart of her eye that said she belonged there. The men gave her wide berth and the bartender responded to orders without her having to say a word.

Mulan sighed into her glass. She'd drunk whiskey in India, vodka in Russia, baijiu in China, and shochu in Japan. All that time, she'd been dreaming of coming home and drinking good American beer.

The beer was good, but nothing else was.

The American government had willingly taken her in, trained her, turned her into a weapon, and sent her on a suicide mission. When she had, against all odds, survived, they hadn't known what to do with her and so had decided that she didn't exist. Had never existed. Would never exist.

They'd turned her into a ghost, the bastards.

Now she made her living outside of the law that had left her behind. She'd discovered that she was not only good, she enjoyed it.

Some days, though, conscience stabbed, and when that happened, good American beer didn't cut it. Irish whiskey in a Boston bar, however…

"I'll have a double of Four Roses, neat, and another of whatever the lady is having."

Mulan glanced at the pretty, athletic blonde who took the seat next to her where the gruff ex-military and ex-cons feared to tread.

"Emma Swan," Mulan said, lifting her new glass in acknowledgement of the gift. "One of these boys skipped his bail?"

"Nope," Emma said, taking a sip of her own drink. "I'm here looking for you."

"Oh? Did I miss a court date? Normally you have to exist to have one of those. I can't think of another reason a law-abiding bail bondsperson would make her way out to this place."

"I've been contemplating a change in hats. Abiding by the law is so… limiting sometimes, you know?"

"You?" Mulan asked, honestly stunned.

"Me. I've a job that needs some muscle. It's not legal, but it is the right thing to do." She cut those bright green eyes over to Mulan. "Interested?"

~?~?~?~?~

Thief

_Henry Morgan/Francis Drake/Edward Teach/Killian Jones*/Hizir Barbarossa/Jean-David Nau/William Kidd/John Rackam_

**Codename** : Captain Hook

**Position** : Thief/Retrievals expert

**Record** : Wanted in Barbados, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Cuba, Venezuela, Italy, Spain, and Lebanon. * _If, as suspected, Killian Jones is subject's real name: Ages 7-15 British Child Protective Services. Ages 16-20 British Royal Navy. Achieved Lieutenant's rank. Dishonorable discharge. No further official record._

**Reputation/Rumor** : Subject widely believed to be mad. Often steals items of relatively limited black market value. Believed to simply enjoy the act (adventure?) of theft itself. Has been known to steal items only to return them within a month, or trade one stolen item for another.

**Notes** : Works alone.

The loft apartment overlooking the Boston Harbor looked as though it had been ransacked. There were cups of half-finished tea and coffee on every surface, drawers opened halfway with their contents spilling out, blankets crumpled around the sofa and pillows strewn across the room. There were clothes scattered across the floor as though the person wearing them had torn them off as they moved through the room. A black tuxedo jacket slumped mournfully on the kitchen table, one shiny dress shoe in one corner, the other sitting in front of the door, the white shirt hung wrinkled from the shoulders of the man standing, pantsless, in front of the picture window that looked out on the harbor.

It might have been nothing but the normal detritus of a bachelor's flat, save that this place was normally kept preternaturally organized.

Killian had been awake for 20 hours and had spent the last 10 pacing his apartment like a madman, picking things up and putting them down in the wrong places, trying to settle down for sleep or reading or television, only to jump back up thirty seconds later to pace again, making cups of tea and leaving them unfinished on every surface.

It had all been going so well- pose as a member of the catering staff for the gallery opening, slip into the empty museum, ventilation shaft to the classics gallery, cut the painting out of its frame and away before you could say "Jack Robinson." Everything had gone to plan until…

Until she'd walked in on his heist and, rather than screaming, or turning him in, or any of a thousand things he'd expected, she'd kissed him. Even that he might have planned for (he was dashingly handsome, after all) but not her reasons.

She'd heard the approaching guard on an early round seconds before he had, and had shielded his body in its climbing harness with her small, slim form. Then, when the guard had left, too embarrassed to look at the pair of them and notice his rigging still hanging from the ceiling, she still hadn't turned him in. She'd only told him to look out for himself, and left without a backward glance.

That should have been the end of it- get out before more bad luck befell him- the black-market value of the painting wasn't worth his life- but he hadn't quite managed it.

He'd rifled her purse while they kissed, more by instinct than intent, and had come away with a business card- Emma Swan, Bail Bonds. There'd been a little icon of a yellow VW Bug at the bottom, so when he'd seen just such a car in the museum parking lot, he'd rolled the dice and waited for her.

He blessed the gods of thieves and gamblers when he'd seen her- blonde curls, sky-high heels, dress that might well have been painted on her. She'd patted him down to find the painting, and he blamed an unusually long dry spell for the way her touch had affected him. She didn't believe him when she said he hadn't taken it, but he'd convinced her eventually.

And then… and then….

" _If you didn't steal it, why are you here?"_

_He scratched behind his right ear, suddenly feeling nervous. "I wanted to thank you for saving me back there by distracting the guard. It was quick thinking."_

_She shrugged, also looking uncomfortable. "You might not have needed saving if I hadn't surprised you."_

" _No, he was on an early round. I'd have been caught. So… thanks. And thanks for the kiss." He'd transitioned swiftly back into the charming rogue he played so well. "Don't suppose you'd like to try it again sometime? Perhaps a bit longer and a bit more horizontal?"_

_She'd smirked. "Sorry, buddy. I don't generally kiss men whose names I don't know. You were a one-time exception."_

" _Well, I have always been exceptional." He spread his arms and gave a flourishing bow. "Killian Jones."_

… He'd give her his name. His real name. Not one of his many aliases. Not even the colourful moniker he'd taken on when he'd lost his left hand. His _name_.

And then, if that wasn't bad enough…

" _If ever you need the services of a thief extraordinaire, feel free to contact Captain Hook."_

Emma Swan, Bail Bonds. She was the next thing to a cop- he'd looked her up once he got home, and her name was all over police reports, and not like his was, she was a white-hat- and he'd told her everything.

He'd been restless ever since, trying to suss why he'd said what he'd said, why he'd confessed to her, what he was going to do now, whether he needed to run, whether the police were about to rain down fire on his head.

If the police were about to burst into the flat, he really should put on pants, but he continued to stand, looking out over Boston- the place he'd finally made something a bit like home.

His phone rang. Not his cell phone, the flat line. The one that went to his benign alter ego.

"Henry Morgan," he said, sliding his accent just slightly to the back of his tongue to cover the light Irish lilt with a London accent that would sound nearly generic to the untrained American ear.

"I'm calling for Killian Jones."

His blood froze. No one who called this number should ever be able to connect Killian Jones and Henry Morgan. No. One.

"I'm sorry," he said, mind already racing ahead to how quickly he could get out of Boston, "I'm afraid you have the wrong number."

"This is Emma Swan," the voice on the other end of the line said, cutting across the swirling panic in his brain. "I... I'll be at the Rabbit Hole. It's a pub on the south side. I'll be there all day." She hung up.

Killian's brain, once swirling like a tempest, was now still and silent. She'd found him.

He should run anyway- it could easily be a trap. He should vanish into the night.

He remembered her kiss- warm and wet and sweet as caramel on his tongue, and smiled. He'd always been a gambler. Perhaps the time had come to roll the dice again.


	2. Mastermind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The response to the first chapter of this story was rather overwhelming, and I'm so thrilled you guys are excited about it! I'm definitely excited (and always pleased to meet other Leverage fans).**
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> **Have a lovely, long chapter as celebration for this finest of Fanfiction Fridays!**
> 
> **(And if you didn't wish WhoLockGal a happy birthday on Wednesday, wish her a belated one today!)**
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> **I will offer a quick warning: eagle-eyed observers may recognize some ripped-from-the-headlines style characterizations that bear striking resemblances to modern political figures. Any similarities between villains in this story and villains in real life is entirely intentional and I don't apologize.**

_Five Years Ago_

Emma settled into her usual seat in the diner with her coffee and laptop. She'd had to cancel the internet at her place (again) to make rent this month, so she was borrowing the city WiFi to access to catch her latest scumbag bail-jumper. It was a pity she couldn't do it at home- he was apparently the sort of guy who started a private chat with "nice tits" and expected that to work for him, so she could use a bit of Irish in her coffee.

She'd been there ten minutes when a woman burst into the coffee shop in a panic, screaming something about her son, and fifteen minutes later the place was covered in cops. It wasn't a crime scene, so no one was kicked out or barred from entering, but Emma could see the annoyance on the faces of the two women who ran the place as people turned away at the sight of so many police officers.

Emma remained- if she went home, she'd have a much harder time accessing the internet- and watched.

The woman with the missing son had calmed down, and now sat, nervous and uncomfortable, at one of the tables surrounded by cops. She looked like the sort of woman who normally had herself together- tasteful pantsuit, short, well-kept brown hair, perfect makeup- and would be uncomfortable with the kind of show of emotion she had just displayed.

Emma felt for her, especially as she watched the cops talk over her and ignore practically everything she said. After the third time this happened, Emma went to the counter and bought a second cup of coffee, which she brought to the woman's table.

"Here. You looked like you needed it," she said, simply.

The woman looked surprised and slightly suspicious, but clearly needed something to bolster her.

"Thanks," she said, finally. "Just… thanks."

Emma shrugged. "It's just a cup of coffee. I'm Emma. Emma Swan."

"Regina. Mills."

"Look… I know you have a lot of help-" she gestured vaguely at the cops milling around, "-but if you need anything…"

Regina pursed her lips at the police officers, then gave Emma a thin, tense smile. "You don't happen to be an expert at finding missing persons, do you Ms. Swan?"

Emma opened her mouth to say that of course she wasn't, but hesitated.

Regina didn't miss that fact, and her eyes went wide, a look of hope crossing her carefully controlled face. "Are you?" she asked.

"I… not exactly but… kind of?" Emma said, sitting at the seat across from her and frowning. "I'm a bounty hunter- I catch people who skip bail, you know?"

The hope faded slightly from Regina's face, but her eyes remained focused and interested. "But you do find people."

"Scumbags, Mrs. Mills, not kids. And you've got all these cops-"

Once again, that look of annoyance. "These police officers are not listening to me. They are quite convinced…" she looked suddenly embarrassed. "I had been seeing this man for a little while, Ms. Swan. Things ended between us recently and it was… acrimonious. The police are convinced that it was him but I… whatever my feelings about what happened between us, I can't imagine that of Graham."

Emma said nothing, though she, personally, would put very little past most men, even those that seemed nice.

"You have another theory?" she asked, instead.

Regina nodded. "Henry is adopted. I have never lied to him about this and, until recently, it didn't seem to bother him. He has lately, however, been very interested in his origins. I'd be happy to tell him anything I know, but it was a closed and sealed adoption. My understanding is that his mother wasn't legally an adult."

Emma's stomach clenched at the story that could so easily have been hers.

"You've told the police this?" she asked.

"They are convinced that, given that the records are sealed, Henry wouldn't have had any idea where to go on his own. They are sure he was taken."

Emma smirked and leaned closer to Regina. "Between me and you, Ms. Mills," she said in a low voice, "a 15-year-old could hack a municipal sealed record."

"Henry is only ten."

"Then maybe he got someone else to do it for him. Let me see what I can do. I can't promise anything, but I'll try, Ms. Mills."

There was that look of hope again. "Thank you," Regina said, sincerely.

An hour later, Emma found him in the first place she looked: standing in the newest section of the Evergreen Cemetery, before a small white stone with the name Lily on it.

"Henry Mills?" she asked, approaching from the side, picking her way around stones to join him.

He looked at her, and his eyes were red. He'd obviously been crying, but he didn't look scared.

"Who're you?"

"My name's Emma Swan. Your mom sent me."

"Regina?" he said, and his lower lip began to wobble again. "She's not my real mom." He pointed at the stone. "She is."

Emma sighed and came to kneel beside him in front of the stone, putting him just slightly taller than her. She patted his shoulder.

"Yeah, I know. You're right, Kid. She was."

Henry sniffled. "Why'd she give me up?"

"She was sixteen," Emma said, quietly. "She only died five years after she had you." She'd been twenty-one and driving drunk. Emma sincerely hoped that Henry hadn't found that out.

"Sixteen isn't that young," he muttered, and Emma nearly smiled- she supposed sixteen seemed adult when you were ten, but the thought of being that young made Emma, at 23, feel ancient.

"And maybe," Henry continued, "if I'd been with her-"

"No," Emma said, stopping him there. Chances were, if he'd been with her, he'd have died too. "Lily gave you up because she didn't think she could give you your best chance. She set up a private adoption with someone that she was sure would be your mom, you know? Regina… you might not have her eyes or chin, but she's your mom just as much as Lily was. You want to know how I know that?"

Henry blinked, and nodded, his peaty-green eyes full of tears again.

"I know 'cause she sent me, and she sent me 'cause she's terrified, Kid."

"My mom's not scared of anything."

Emma gave him a small smile. "She's scared of losing you. She loves you like crazy, Henry Mills. Why don't you let me take you back to her?"

Henry hesitated for just a moment, then nodded, finally looking away from his mother's grave. He sniffled and wiped his nose again on the sleeve of his jacket, then took Emma's hand to lead him away.

Back at the diner, Regina threw herself at Henry the moment he appeared. She hugged him to her for a long, long time, holding him to her heart and resting her cheek on the top of his head. Once she'd done that, she held him out so that she could check him over for injuries and then, once that was done, she tore into him for running away, swearing that he wouldn't leave his room for a month.

Emma couldn't help but smile. It was such a _mother_ thing for Regina to do, it warmed her heart. She shoved her hands in the pockets of her jacket and wended her way through the remaining police to the diner door, the smile still playing on her lips.

"Ms. Swan!"

The voice stopped her in her tracks and Emma turned to find Regina and Henry Mills looking at her.

"Please, you must let me pay you."

Even before she'd finished the sentence, Emma was shaking her head. "No," she said. "It wasn't anything, I…"

"It wasn't nothing, Ms. Swan," Regina said, firmly. She looked down at her son, and her face softened. "It was everything. Please… just… just $5000. It's not much."

Emma stood for a moment, her mouth hanging open in shock. Five thousand dollars was more than she'd make in a month, even if she caught every single one of her marks. It would let her pay her rent, utilities, buy a tank of gas for the Bug, and even get a little bit ahead on her credit cards.

And Regina was calling it "not much." She'd be a fool to turn it down, and Emma Swan was no fool.

The cheque that Regina cut her said, in the memo line, "for being our Savior."

~?~?~?~?~

_Present day_

The pub was typical of the area: of Irish extraction, slightly shabby and down-at-heel but clean and well-kept, and with clientele that was rough but not rude, and obviously relatively familiar with one-another. It was a quintessential South Boston local where his accent and Black Irish looks would raise absolutely no eyebrows. He was impressed with Emma Swan for having selected it- it indicated a strategic, well-organized sort of a mind.

She was sitting at a table facing the door, talking to a ginger-haired woman who had her back to him, a serious expression on her face. As the door closed behind him, she glanced up and nodded in recognition before returning her eyes to the woman at her table. They spoke for another moment, then the other woman stood, offering her hand and the two shook before she walked toward the back of the pub, never looking at Killian. It hardly mattered though, his eyes were trained on Emma, who was even lovelier in the warm light of the pub than she had been in the dim lights of the museum and parking lot.

She seemed to feel his regard and smiled nervously at him, tucking a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear unnecessarily. She gestured to the seat across from her that the woman had just vacated and Killian slid in gracing her with his patented 1000-watt grin.

"Emma Swan," he said, savoring the way her name felt on his tongue- sweet and bright as sparkling lemonade.

She smiled. "That's me," she said. "I'm not sure what to call you, you have so many names apparently."

"Hook will do," he said, ignoring the voice in his head that wanted to give her permission to use his own name. He opened his mouth to say more, perhaps ask how the hell she'd found his alias, when they were interrupted by the waitress.

"Can I get you a drink, sir?" she asked.

He glanced over at her- a petite Asian woman who, balking the tradition of attractive barmaids the world over, appeared to have no interest in smiling and flirting with him. She had an air of competence and efficiency, which surprised him slightly and pleased him greatly.

"I'd like a double of your top shelf rum, on the rocks."

"On my tab," Emma added, to his surprise.

"Now, Love-" he started, but she interrupted.

"I'm not your love, and I insist." She nodded the girl off, then looked him square in the eye. "It's the least I can do, since this isn't entirely a friendly get-together. I have a… proposal for you."

"If it's to find a dark corner and finish what we started in the Classics gallery last night, then there's no need to buy me a drink, Swan," he said with a wink. "But-" he continued, lifting a finger to stop her speaking as she opened her mouth to do so, "-only you Americans start talking business before the first drink's gone."

Far from being offended, she laughed. "Guess you're lucky I bothered to learn your name first."

"Aye. Bloody Yanks. I'll let you propose anything you like to me, but I get ten minutes to talk to you first. Deal?"

"Deal. Anything particular you want to talk about?"

"How about how you found me."

Her green eyes glittered with humour. "The same way I knew to look for you making trouble in the museum. Your suit."

"My suit?" he asked, blankly.

"Yeah. Your bespoke, Edward Sexton tuxedo."

He felt his mouth fall open and her smile deepened.

"Waiters don't wear custom tuxes from world-renowned London tailors, Captain," she explained with a grin. "Catering companies buy them wholesale and hope for a halfway decent fit. Only one reason to pretend to be staff, and that's to get into restricted areas. I told the caterer I'd had too much to drink, talked her into letting me sit in the kitchen to catch my breath, and snuck out to find you. Then, once I got home, I hacked the Sexton client database to find anyone living in Boston. I admit, I chose Henry Morgan of Boston on a hunch." She shrugged. "What with the whole pirate thing."

"Blimey," he said, staring at her in wonder.

"You really should be more careful," she said, her tone serious.

He shook his head. "I've been at this job for ten years, and I've learned a few things. There are people who might recognize the provenance of that suit I was wearing, and there are people who notice waiters at events like that, but those two groups of people _never_ intersect. For you to not only notice a waiter enough to make note of his clothing, recognize the quality of that clothing and then to draw the correct conclusions about what it means… you, Emma Swan, might be unique in all the world."

She blushed becomingly, but was saved having to respond to this by the waitress appearing to deliver his drink.

Emma reached over and moved his drink from where it had been placed, before his left hand, closer to his right. He was surprised, though he decided he shouldn't have been. She'd seemed completely unaware of his hook, and he'd thought she just hadn't noticed the thing, but with the kind of observational skills she'd just displayed, she must have done.

"The one you're wearing today is different from the one you had last night," she said simply, opening the floor for him to explain, but leaving the amount he wanted to divulge up to him.

He glanced down at it- a plain prosthetic hook, relatively ordinary and functional if, perhaps, less so than a left hand. He hadn't had one of those in a long time though, so he could hardly say anymore. The device he'd been wearing the previous night, however, was unique and far more useful than a real hand (or so he assured himself). It was like a Swiss Army Knife, with several tools that folded into the cuff and could be traded for one-another- two lock picks in different sizes, two screwdrivers, a blade, and a hook like this one.

"This one came from a physician. The one last night is my own creation."

She nodded and smiled into his eyes. "That's impressive. I figured you were smart. I'd heard of you before, of course, but I guess I didn't figure the _nomme de guerre_ was quite so literal. I can see the benefit though. More streamlined than a toolbelt."

"Aye, perhaps, though the necessity of the thing was hardly intentional."

"Naturally." She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Want to share with the class?"

He smirked and took a sip of his drink. The rum was good- better than he had expected given the unprepossessing appearance of the pub. The place, like the woman before him, appeared to have hidden depths.

"Much as I appreciate the drink and especially your kiss-" he winked "- still I think an air of mystery is necessary in any relationship. Can't give up all my secrets here on the first date."

He'd given up enough of them already..

Killian made an ostentatious show of checking his phone. "Looks like your ten minutes are up, Swan-" they weren't, quite, but he thought it a good idea to move this conversation out of treacherous waters, "-now I think you have a proposal for me."

She didn't call him on his white lie, instead she nodded and glanced around the room before leaning forward across the table to him.

"Have you ever heard of The Savior?" she asked.

Killian leaned back in his seat, eyes narrowed at the woman across from him, and contemplated his answer.

The truth was that he _had_ heard of The Savior. They were a member of that peculiar fraternity which thrived on the shadowy side of the law, and most members at least knew _of_ one-another.

It was said that The Savior could find anyone, be they runaway child, kidnap victim, philandering spouse, estranged parent, or missing heir. Killian had never heard of them to fail.

That was the truth, but Killian wasn't sure if it was what he should tell Emma Swan, Bail Bonds- next thing to a cop. The Savior's ends were always honorable, though their means were frequently on the murky side of legality, and Killian thought there might be a price on their head, which could be of some interest to a bounty hunter.

His jaw clenched as he considered her. She had managed to touch some instinctual part of himself that had given her his name against his better judgement, but trusting her with his own fate was one thing. Giving her ammunition on someone else- someone who couldn't even speak for themself- was a whole other.

"Have you misplaced someone, Lass?" he hedged, probing.

She smiled an oddly knowing smile.

"Not me, a friend. His name is Michael and, about 12 years ago he was on a camping trip and met a girl staying on the same campground. They hit it off, like you do, spent the week together, like you do, and parted ways-"

"Like you do," Killian filled in. "So he's looking for her? A missed connection seems a bit mundane for The Savior."

She grinned in triumph, and he realized he'd tipped his hand and admitted to knowing who The Savior was. He shook his head and wondered what it was about her that made his tongue so loose.

She didn't say anything about it, but continued her story.

"No, he's not looking for her, though she was looking for him for awhile. See, about 18 months ago, she was diagnosed with cancer, given six months to live, and needed to see to the state of her ten-year-old twins."

She looked at him significantly, and Killian frowned as he ran the numbers in his head.

"So the children are-"

"Michael's," Emma confirmed with a nod. "At least, that's what she put in the will. She named him their guardian since she didn't have anyone else, but she also didn't have a whole lot of money for a really good lawyer. She was stuck with someone without the resources to find him, and the kids ended up in the system."

Killian's jaw clenched. Children who had someone to go to should not be stuck in the system.

"They're a boy and a girl- Nick and Ava. Nick- he's really smart- managed to find Michael and, eventually, convince him of… everything. So Michael started working on adopting them, but it took too long. Ava got adopted out from under him. That might just be bad luck or something, but the circumstances are really suspicious- it happened too fast, too much money changed hands, and Nick had a really bad feeling about the people who took her."

"So you need The Savior to find the girl and the people who adopted her," Killian said.

Emma shook her head. "I never said I needed The Savior. I asked if you'd heard of her."

Killian opened his mouth to respond, then her words hit home. "Her?"

She smiled and leaned back in her seat, watching as the realizations dawned on him.

He glanced around the pub and noticed that the waitresses who flitted from table to table like butterflies were dressed differently than the girl who had brought his rum. She was there, he discovered, standing in a dark corner, easily overlooked, watching their table with a steady eye.

The red-head he'd seen talking to Emma when he'd walked in was nowhere to be seen. She had not exited out the front door.

Killian acted on a hunch- a tiny niggle of premonition he'd had from nearly the moment he'd entered the pub. Without seeking permission, he leaned forward and reached for Swan's face. He approached slowly, and she did not move, though he saw the woman in the corner twitch. He brushed his fingers over the apple of Swan's cheek as he moved past to her ear. She did not even flinch as he pressed a finger into it and discovered, as he had suspected, an inner-ear communication device, which he removed and showed her.

"What do you want from me, Emma Swan? And how about we try something a bit new: the truth."

"My name is Emma Swan," she said, voice level and soft. "Some people call me The Savior. I find people that no one else can find and, most of the time, I bring them back to where they belong."

"And this time?"

Her green eyes found his, steady and serious. "I can't get to Ava myself. I need a thief."

~?~?~?~?~

Mastermind

_Emma Swan_

**Codename** : The Savior

 **Position** : Locations expert

 **Record** : Ages 0-16 in Child Protective Services. Sealed juvenile record: grand larceny. Extended sentence for refusing to give information on other parties involved. No criminal record since release. Bounty hunter/bail bonds.

 **Reputation/Rumor** : Can find any person with near pin-point accuracy. Cannot be lied to.

 **Notes** : Works alone.

Emma sighed. The four people before her were all known for being the best in their field and for working alone, but for better or for worse (and she was beginning to suspect it would be worse) they were the tools she had to work with, and it was her responsibility to wield them without setting off too many sparks and blowing the whole operation.

She had her work cut out for her, she concluded as she watched them.

August was sprawled artfully in the most comfortable chair in Emma's living room. He was the only person who looked at all relaxed. In fact, he shot Emma a grin as she glanced over him before turning her eyes to the other three members of what could be called only by the most generous margin, a team.

If they were cats, they'd be facing off against each other with that dangerous low grumble that can open up into a yowl in an instant. Cats are more direct than people, however, and the three humans flatly refused to look at one another.

Zelena sat on one end of the sofa, blue eyes trained on the laptop screen where the information she, August, and Emma had collected about the situation in the last few days was displayed. On the opposite end of the couch, as far from her as he could manage, sat Hook, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, that foot bouncing like mad, muscle in his jaw ticking like a clock. Between them, standing behind the couch with her arms crossed, was Mulan- as still and silent as a statue.

They'd all recognized each other by name when Emma had introduced them around and, beneath the reticence, she'd been able to detect a vein of respect. The trouble was that each of them had a reputation and attendant ego, and that made for a minefield that Emma would have to navigate.

No use continuing to put it off, she decided.

"Zelena, do you mind?" she asked.

A slight narrowing of those oddly-light eyes told Emma that Zelena _did_ mind, but she pressed the button on her laptop that sent the images on that screen to the much larger television screen behind Emma without saying anything.

"This is, as I'm sure you know, Cruella De'Ville, fashion mogul, media personality, and sometime politician."

The woman on the screen was skeletally thin but otherwise the picture of hedonistic opulence in silk and fur- in spite of the recent falling-out among even the wealthiest set with real furs. Her makeup was perfectly applied and grotesquely overdone. Her hair was obviously rigorously maintained in an absurd stark black-and-white dye job that looked more like a wig than any real wigmaker would allow. The photo was from a Vanity Fair spread that also showed the interior of her Fifth Avenue penthouse, decorated in a baroque black-and-red style that was both massively expensive and wildly off-putting.

"The De'Ville name gets stamped on everything from overpriced, sweatshop-produced clothes to Dubai hotels to bottled water, and about half of those enterprises fail within a year of starting. For the most part though, those failures never touch Cruella here, because once she's been paid for the use of her name, she walks away, cash in hand, and never takes another moment's responsibility."

"Why do people keep using her name if it fails so often?" Mulan asked.

Hook jumped when she spoke. It was the first time she had done so since Emma had brought him to the condo above the bar that was her home.

"Marketing mostly," Emma said, ignoring Zelena's sneering laugh at Hook's expense. "Cruella has managed to make her name synonymous with wealth and success, no matter what the reality is."

"She's basically a child's idea of what a rich person is," August said, standing up and crossing to Emma's side as he spoke. "The lowest-common-denominator sees the furs, the big penthouse, the champagne, the ten-foot-high gold letters of her name, and they think 'wealth.'"

"And in this country, 'wealth' means 'smart,' which she's leveraged into a weird sort of political identity," Emma continued. "She's made two bids for president so far, neither of which were viewed as terribly serious. They were both basically advertising campaigns, the first time was for a book, and the second was for a low-rated reality show that she hosted for awhile before the network kicked her off. Most real political minds consider her something of a joke, but she's taken to using her social media accounts to complain about the current guy in office and using those two presidential bids as her political _bona fides_."

"God help us all if anyone starts taking her seriously," Zelena muttered.

"I don't have a terribly high opinion of the American electorate, but I think we're smarter than that," Emma said.

"She looks like a bloody cartoon character," Hook said, apparently growing impatient. "What's she got to do with your little girl?"

"Cruella has Ava," Emma said, simply.

"She adopted-"

"No," Emma interrupted. "That would have been too much publicity. Nothing Cruella does is private, if she'd adopted a kid, everyone would already know about it. Ava was adopted by this woman."

The screen filled with a photo of a world-weary-faced black woman dressed in janitor's coveralls.

"Ursula Mar, janitor at the New York Aquarium," Emma said.

"That's your villain?" Hook sounded completely disbelieving.

Emma met his eyes for the first time since they'd left the pub. She'd been avoiding it- it really wasn't fair for a man to be that pretty- but he'd surprised her.

"What's that?"

Hook pointed at the woman on the screen. "That woman doesn't look like one of De'Ville's accomplices. She looks like one of her victims."

Zelena made an irritated noise in the back of her throat and her fingers began suddenly flying across the keyboard of her laptop.

"Ava's adoption," she said, the pages of the contract appearing on the screen, "signed by Ursula Mar. Records of the stipend checks sent and cashed-" a series of spreadsheets which were, in fact, too small to read flashed up next, "-by Ursula Mar. The best adoption lawyer in the state of New York-" a photo of a man in a suit, quickly replaced by more paperwork, "-contracted by and paid from the accounts of Ursula Mar-"

"Hold the phone," Hook said, raising his hand in a stopping gesture. "Best adoption lawyer in the state on a janitor's wage?"

"'Best' may be a bit of a misnomer," August said, stepping forward even as Emma had moved to do so. Emma rocked back on her heels, shutting her mouth with a click and watched as he continued. "He's the most successful and the most effective because he has the most back-alley contacts. He's 'best' in the same way that you're the 'best' person to go to to procure museum art."

"So he's a crook," Hook said, apparently finding no offense in the comparison's implication that he must be as well. "My experience is that villains are even more expensive than honest men, and lawyers are rather pricey at the best of times. What can a janitor at the aquarium make, $50,000 a year?"

"Closer to thirty-five," Mulan said.

"And people call _me_ a criminal," Hook said airily, shaking his head. "On that salary I can hardly imagine she's paying rent, much less hiring the best adoption lawyer in the state. Where'd she get the money?"

"And that's the question!" August cried, raising his hands dramatically and drawing all eyes in the room to himself. "When an adoption goes as quickly as Ava's did, usually money is changing hands, and Ursula Mar didn't have any."

Hook raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Aye, that's what I was saying."

"We thought it was a great mystery," August said, beginning to pace across the front of the room, gesticulating wildly, "so we went digging."

"If by 'we' you mean 'Zelena' went digging," Zelena said, eyes narrowed at August.

"I pointed you in the right direction," August said, waving her off. "Me and Emma," he added, obviously an afterthought. "Anyway, she paid this guy $100,000 that we know she didn't have. We traced the accounts-"

" _I_ traced the accounts," Zelena said hotly. "And I'll have you know I traced them through twelve shell companies and two untraceable banks. Did you catch that? Un-bloody-traceable! But I traced them."

"And the money came from this man!" August said over Zelena's objections, turning to point at the screen which hadn't changed. He turned to raise an eyebrow at Zelena, who glared at him, but did click a button to bring up a thin-faced man with high cheekbones and heavy eyebrows.

"Isaac Heller," August said, turning and grinning to the room as though he had made a very clever point. "Cruella's right hand."

Hook did not look impressed. "Sorry, I'm still not seeing what all this has to do with the girl we're worried about. And-" he said loudly as August opened his mouth, apparently about to continue explaining, "-I hate to interrupt you, Mate, but I was hired by the lady-" he gestured to Emma, "-under the impression that this was her team, not yours. I thought I was getting in with The Savior, not some bloody wooden doll."

"Emma is the one paying us," Mulan said, apparently taking Hook's side.

"You'll get paid no matter-" August started.

"Oh sit down and shut up, August," Zelena interrupted irritably. "You know perfectly well that Emma is the brains behind this operation, and you're just being a wanker."

August glared around the room, then threw himself sulkily back into his chair, and all eyes returned to Emma.

"Ursula is probably on some level a victim of Cruella," Emma said softly, stepping forward and speaking directly to Hook. "I expect she's probably being blackmailed somehow, and she's absolutely being used because she's a nobody that no one is going to pay any attention to. But she did adopt Ava, she has been getting the government money, and she doesn't have the kid. We've been to see her to check."

"We?" Killian asked.

"Mulan and me."

Hook looked around the room calculatingly. "So everyone's been on this team for how long without me?"

"Only about a week, darling," Zelena said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Don't get your feelings hurt, the party hasn't been going long. You're only fashionably late."

"Everyone was recruited to the team as their skills were needed. When we realized we needed a thief though, we didn't know anyone- no one good enough, anyway. My meeting you at the gala was luck. I was tailing Isaac."

"Right, Isaac. The one with the money?" Killian asked.

"They've all got money," Emma said, waving her hand at the screen. "Cruella's rumored to be worth $10 billion."

"Honestly I can only find five, so it's either all talk, or she's smarter about hiding her money than I'd have given her credit for," Zelena said.

"So you just go rooting around through people's lives?" Killian asked, sounding dubious. "You steal from behind a computer screen?"

"Well yeah," Zelena said, looking surprised. "It's the way of the future."

"You're a bloody supervillain."

Zelena didn't look the slightest bit offended at this. "No," she said, airily. "Supervillains are evil, which is just bad and usually rather stupid. I'm wicked, which is just as bad, but clever enough to make it work, and wicked always wins."

Killian shook his head and turned to look at Mulan who appeared amused by this. "I don't even know what you do," he said insultingly.

Far from being insulted, Mulan just gave him a mysterious smile. "Whatever the boss says," she answered cryptically, eyes flicking to Emma.

Killian wasn't to be distracted and turned to August next. "And what about you. What's your story?"

"I'm a grifter. I grift," August said with a sneer. "I think it's far too early in this relationship to share all our secrets, don't you?"

Killian looked like he might lash into August and August looked like he'd relish the fight. Emma raised her voice over this testosterone stew.

"Two months ago," she called, bringing all the eyes in the room back to her, "Ursula Mar was left an inheritance by a distant rich relative. The first payment was $100,000 and went straight to the lawyer. The second was another $500,000 and arrived about the time she brought Ava home with her, two weeks later. The last was $1 million, a month later. We suspect it's when Ava left her."

Killian frowned. "She sold-"

Emma spoke quickly over the question. "About ten years ago there was a little bit of a wave about De'Ville importing women illegally from Eastern Europe to be models. Nothing ever came of it, but it looks like that was just the tip of the iceberg. Zelena?"

A series of pictures flashed on screen of a depressing grey tenement, not in a neighborhood, but in what appeared to be a warehouse district. There were three pale faces at the front door, and on the porch, turning at just the right angle to be recognizable at the angle of the photos, the same thin-faced man from the earlier pictures. He had a small person under his arm, nothing identifiable about that person but a mass of brown curls and a dark winter coat.

"Zelena went through more CCTV footage than I'd like to think about," Emma said into the suddenly tense silence in the room. Even Zelena's irreverent humor had been curbed for the moment. "There's are several houses like this in New York, Chicago, here in Boston, LA, Dallas… there are probably others."

"So it's…" Killian began, then trailed off, not quite willing to admit what it must be.

"It's human trafficking," Emma said, brutally. "Some of the women still become models- they're paid next-to-nothing, almost all of the money they make goes straight into the De'Ville coffers, but they're the lucky ones. And an eleven-year-old girl? She's not going to be a model."

She looked around the room. The sense of egos bumping into each other was quelled for the moment, and the focus of every razor-sharp mind in the room was laser-focussed on her. It was heady and terrifying.

"So we go and steal the girl?"

Emma shook her head, turning to look at the grainy photo, imagining the girl's fear and pain. She knew it was wrong, but she was grateful to whatever angels had watched over her, that, in spite of everything else that had been done to her, she only had to imagine this indignity, not remember it. For all that, she couldn't let it stand.

"We're not just taking Ava and running," Emma said, and her voice was as cold as ice. "We're saving all of those girls, and we're going to topple the De'Villes so they'll never be able to do anything like this again."

She turned back to the group. "Five billion dollars, like Zelena said. We won't be able to get our hands on all of it, the government, FBI, CIA, Interpol, they'll all take a piece for evidence, but we should be able to sneak away a couple of million. Everyone gets an even share of the take, with a bit taken out to set Ava, her dad, and her brother up for awhile. Agreed?"

"And what happens in the end when you get your white hat back?" August asked, rejoining the conversation again finally.

"It's a walk-off. A one-time thing. When this is done, it never happened, I've never met any of you. I don't even know your names."

Emma held her breath, expecting to be challenged, but to her surprise, she was not.

"Agreed," August said. He would, of course- he knew her better than any of them, back to their days in a group home before his first ever grift, which had finally pulled him from the foster system.

Mulan and Killian both nodded as well, and Emma turned to look at Zelena who was watching her through those pale, strange eyes, reading her like a computer screen.

"You'll give us your word you won't turn us in or go chasing us down?" Zelena asked.

Emma nodded, her mouth dry. This wouldn't work without Zelena, she knew.

To her surprise, the ginger woman nodded. "That's fine then."

"You'll accept my word?" Emma blurted out, too surprised to hold her tongue.

Zelena smiled. "You're an honest woman, Savior. You'll keep your word or die trying, it's the trouble with honest people, really."

"We're yours to order for the duration," Killian said, leaning back on the sofa with exaggerated calm, and extending his left arm- the one ending in the hook- over the back of the couch, ignoring Zelena's discomfited glances at it, and reclaiming the swagger Emma thought he had left in the bar below. "Do with us as you will, and no need to be gentle. My safeword is 'keelhaul' for future reference."


	3. A Classic Honeytrap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Boy is it ever Friday?**
> 
> **As ever, any similarity between my characters and real people either living, dead, or currently leader of the free world is probably intentional and I'm not sorry.**

_De'Ville Hotel Restaurant, Central Park West, New York, New York_

"I hate the honeytrap con," August whined as he took a sip of the mimosa that had arrived at their table a minute before. "There's no real skill to it."

"Stop bitching about it," Emma muttered, watching the door over his shoulder as she drank her own coffee distractedly. "If it's so far beneath you, I'll get Hook to do it."

The rivalry between those two was beginning to grate on Emma's nerves. She promised herself that if she ever worked with another team, she'd be sure there were no more than one man on it- women just made better criminals, in her opinion.

"Here was me thinking I'd been hired for my thieving skills." Hook's voice was deeply amused in her ear. "Is it possible the great Savior actually hired me for my pretty face?"

No, Emma decided, the next team she worked with would have _no_ men on it at all.

"Nearly eighty percent of all cons are based on the honeytrap concept," Zelena explained. "How can you possibly have become a grifter without knowing how to run a honeytrap con?"

"I know how to run one," August snapped. "I can run one in my sleep. I can run one blindfolded or with my face bandaged or without using words that contain the letter 'e.' It's boring."

"Oh poor darling," Zelena snarked. "Are we not challenging you enough? Perhaps you'd like to do my job?"

"Sit on my shapely ass behind a computer and act superior to everyone?" August hissed.

"You've got the last bit down pat," Hook muttered.

"Would you people shut up, I can't hear myself think!" Mulan said. Emma could hear the clatter and crash of the restaurant's kitchen in the background around her.

"I didn't realize thinking was necessary for your job," Zelena said sharply. "Why don't you just go find something to hit."

"Oh, I'll find something to hit," Mulan promised darkly.

Never mind, Emma concluded. She'd never work on a team again. This was why she had always worked alone: people suck.

One positive thing could be said, however: Zelena's earbud communicators were extremely effective. She and August were in the restaurant, Hook and Zelena in the van outside, Mulan in the restaurant's kitchen, and they could hear and speak to each other as though they were still in Emma's living room.

She ignored the continued bickering and kept her eyes trained on the restaurant entrance.

Finally she saw them.

"It's go time," she whispered as the pair approached the hostess' podium.

She stood and threw her coffee into August's face. He blinked at her stupidly as she stood, her face twisting into misery.

"You said you were going to slap me," he complained. "I was ready for a slap."

"Don't be a baby, the coffee isn't that hot. One more second," she murmured, "then grab for me as I storm off."

She did and he reached out for her arm which she jerked away and, face screwed up and eyes tear-filled, she fell off her heels straight into the pair at the greeting station, knocking so hard into Isaac Heller that he had to grab her arms to keep her from crumpling to the floor as Cruella De'Ville stepped back , looking at her like a stain on the floor.

"Ingrid!" August cried, stumbling toward her and laying a hand on her arm. They hadn't been able to decide on a name, so Emma had given him free reign. She wanted to roll her eyes that he'd chosen the name of Emma's last foster mom.

"Don't talk to me," she cried, voice choked with tears. She shoved him away and moved so that Isaac was between herself and August. "Don't come near me. How could you? How could you do this to me? How could you do this to Daddy?" She burst into tears and went running out the front door.

Once outside the restaurant, her face cleared. In her hands were Cruella's phone, and a keycard from Isaac's pocket.

"I don't see why I couldn't have done that," Hook complained as she climbed into the back of the surveillance van and handed both treasures to Zelena to work her magic on. "I could have been dear Oggie's jilted lover just as easily, and theft is my _raison d'etre_."

"People cringe away from gay people doing anything embarrassing," Mulan said over the comms. "They lean in to catch more of what's going on with straight people."

"She's right," Emma said, watching over Zelena's shoulder as she downloaded the information from Cruella's phone. "Anyone who isn't exactly what we expect when we look at them makes us look twice. Go around looking as vanilla as possible and you can get someone to hand you their most valuable possession just by asking. It's basically what August does."

Over the comms they could hear August mournfully explaining to Cruella and Isaac how he had promised to join Emma's father's law firm if he were allowed to marry her.

"But my dear uncle Albie died recently, and now… well-" Emma could see him in her mind's eye shrugging as though to indicate that it was gauche to talk about money so openly, "-now I don't need to work at the law firm, and I'd much rather not. I really would prefer to go into the theatre. I've written a one-man play, you see!"

Emma groaned. The one-man play was real, and appalling, and August talked about it at every opportunity.

"The trouble is that Ingrid's father made it clear that joining the firm was a condition of marrying her, so I had to break it off, you see. I thought if I did it in public, she couldn't make such a scene. Perhaps I should have chosen another restaurant- this is where we had our first date, but it's my favorite."

"Blimey," Hook muttered, listening to this drivel. "He thinks this'll work on a woman?"

"Certain kind of woman," Emma said distractedly, still watching the information scroll through Zelena's computer screen. "We'll have to parse all of that out later, can you do anything with the key card?"

"Can _I_ do anything with the key card?" Zelena asked disgusted as August continued explaining that really, Emma's family should have been thanking him. They were perfectly well-off, but the money that Uncle Albie had left him, well… that was _real_ money. Not that he wanted to talk about it. "Do you know who I am?" Zelena continued.

Emma sighed. "I'm going to assume that means yes."

Zelena slipped the card into a machine on her computer that would read and translate the RFID information.

"Honestly, it's probably for the best," August concluded, sadly. "She's really too high-strung for me. It's a bit… well… lower class, you know?"

"What kind of woman responds to that?" Hook asked, horrified.

"The kind with lowest-common-denominator ideas about money and a less-than-progressive view of women in general," Emma explained, snatching the readout from the RFID machine before Zelena could and looking it over. "It's a room here at the hotel," she said, frowning at it. "Top floor, so it's a nice room, but why does he have a room here? His office is just down the street."

"You're the mastermind around here, always two steps ahead," Zelena said, petulantly. "You figure it out."

"Can't. What we need is someone to get into the room and see if there are any secrets to uncover."

Both women turned their light eyes over to Hook who was continuing to look horrified as he listened to the conversation happening between August, Isaac, and Cruella.

"What?" he asked, surprised, obviously having missed all of this.

Emma tossed both the key and the phone over to him. "Time to get to work, pirate. Return the phone to the front desk and then up to that room. Mulan, can you meet him on the top floor?"

"What's she for?" Hook asked, offended.

"Backup," Emma said.

"I don't need-"

"We don't know what's going to be in that room," Emma said, sharply. "Take the backup and don't whine about it."

"I'll meet you on the top floor," Mulan said.

"Meet him at the elevator," Zelena corrected. "You need a key card to get to that floor."

"Not on the service elevator," Mulan said as the noise of the kitchen faded out as she clearly moved somewhere quieter.

"It's no fun to break into a room that you have a key to," Hook complained offhandedly as he settled his climbing harness and rigging system into place.

"What do you need that for?" Zelena asked Hook as he checked fault points. "There's a bloody elevator."

"The elevator car is plan A," Emma explained, handing Hook a bulky sweater that would hide the harness and his lean-muscled physique. "The elevator shaft is plan B, the roof is plan C-"

"How many plans have you got?" Zelena sounded both shocked and impressed. "Have you got, say, a plan M?"

"Hook dies in plan M," Emma said as she helped him into a coat over top the sweater.

"What was that?" Hook asked, turning suddenly.

Over the intercom, a burst of coughing that sounded suspiciously like August trying to cover a laugh erupted.

"That seems remarkably early in the alphabet, Love," Hook said, his eyes soulful on hers. "You wouldn't _really_ let me die, would you?"

Emma bit back a smile. "In plan M, the final take gets split fewer ways," she said, reaching up to smooth the collar of his coat.

He grabbed her hand before she could pull it away, holding her eyes with his when she looked up at him.

"You're no killer, Savior," he murmured. "You'd find a way to save me, I know it."

Emma swallowed thickly, but was saved having to answer that by Mulan's annoyed voice over the comms.

"I _am_ a killer, and if you don't get your skinny-jeaned butt up here soon with the key, I'll kick the door down myself and drop you down the elevator shaft without a rope."

Emma tugged her hand out of his. "Better get going, Hook," she said, moving back across the van to where Zelena was sitting, ignoring the pair of them ostentatiously. "You wouldn't want to miss all the fun."

"I'm sure I could find fun right here if I looked carefully," he said with a grin, even as he hopped out the back of the van with a jaunty salute.

Zelena was silent for a moment as she pulled up the control panel for the comms and muted both hers and Emma's.

"It's not smart to get involved with someone on your team," she said, and for once Emma couldn't hear her in the earbud as well as the air.

"I know," Emma said, face smooth, giving nothing away. "I'm not stupid."

"I'm glad to hear it, because we're trusting you to get us out of this alive, Savior. You can't get distracted by a pretty face."

Emma said nothing to this, and the two women sat in silence, listening to the rest of their team for a few minutes. The top-floor room seemed to have guards, and Mulan seemed to be having a lovely time.

"Besides," Zelena said, surprising Emma slightly, "you're not like him. He's a criminal."

"You're a criminal," Emma said, surprised that Zelena would have a prejudice.

"I don't look at you all soppy like he does," Zelena answered, her voice going brisk. "I don't even like you. But you're an honest woman, Emma Swan, and an honest person and a crook? It can't work."

"You seem pretty sure of that."

"I am sure. You start feeling like you've got to apologize for things- both of you."

"I don't mind criminals as long as they're not hurting people," Emma said, not sure why she felt the need to defend herself- it wasn't as though she'd be involved with any of these people again once this job was over.

"Like Mulan does?" Zelena asked.

"Mulan only hurts people who need to be hurt," Emma said, then winced at the sound of the words.

"Taking a lot of that judgement on yourself, are you?" Zelena asked, echoing Emma's thoughts and sounding smug. "And that's just it with your thief- you might not mind his little hobby in theory, but eventually you'd start passing judgement. 'Why would you steal from that person when they've done nothing wrong?' Then you'd feel like you had to apologize any time you brought in a thief in your day job, or set a criminal down in your freelance. It's no basis for a relationship. You live in different worlds."

Emma said nothing, but Zelena wasn't finished. "It wouldn't work with dear Oggie either."

"August? What's he got to do with anything?" Emma asked.

Zelena looked at her surprised. "I figured… you two obviously know each other from before, so I thought there might be-"

"There's _nothing_ between me and August," Emma said firmly.

Zelena's eyebrows were nearly at her hairline at this and she opened her mouth to continue when they were interrupted by the sounds of alarms.

"Hurry up, Hook," Mulan shouted breathing hard. The thick, meaty sounds of her fighting had been audible through the comms for several minutes, but Emma hadn't been concerned- Mulan could hold her own against almost anything. "One of these goons hit the fire alarm system."

"And we were having such a nice time too," Hook said, lightly. "Each of us doing what we love most in the world- you causing bodily harm, me finessing a fine safe. It was quite the bonding experience, really."

"There is no possible way you can hear the tumblers moving if you're talking that much," Emma interrupted as Zelena turned her comm back on.

"Hello again, Love, you've been quiet. Ah, there we have it. Suppose I haven't got time to photograph these, so I'll have to take them with me."

"Documents only," Emma said sharply. "No freelancing."

"You're no fun, darling, but I suppose you're the boss. Come along, Mulan. Fire alarms shut down the elevators so we'll take the stairs, what do you say?"

"You can't take the stairs," August muttered. "Isaac's on his way up."

"Roof it is then," Killian said, never daunted.

"Roof?" Mulan asked, sounding horrified.

"Emma, they're going to know we were there," August said quickly. He could say nothing else as Emma watched Cruella, who had just exited the front of the building in response to the alarms at August's side turn to engage him in conversation again.

"Unless he goes through each and every document he won't," Hook said. "I left the folders behind, so it looks untouched. I'm very good at my job, Booth."

August didn't respond to this, as he was giving Cruella his alter-ego's card, though Emma noticed that his smile became just a touch more wooden.

"What are we going to do on the roof?" Mulan asked.

"Why, escape," Hook said, jovially. "What else?"

"Escape," Mulan said, sounding unconvinced. "By jumping off a 60-storey hotel roof."

"You sound dubious, my dear. Don't you trust me?"

"Not even a little bit."

Hook just laughed. "Not a lot of choice in the matter at this moment it seems. My system is meant to be safe up to a ton, though I've never tested that. You don't weigh that much, do you?"

"Don't be nasty, Hook," Emma scolded.

"Come on then, Love, arms around me. Your other choice is to get caught on this roof, so just be glad I'm handsome."

"You're not my type," Mulan said flatly.

"Pity," Hook said, "as you're mine."

"Seriously?" Mulan asked, honestly surprised.

"Aye, I've always had a soft spot for lasses who could best me in a fight. Clip that there, and hold on, aye?"

Mulan gave a shriek that Emma wouldn't have thought she was capable of, which was the only way they could tell that Hook had just thrown the pair of them off the roof.

Zelena shut off their comms again for a moment and turned seriously to Emma as August took his leave of Cruella and made his way toward the van.

"I notice you never said there wasn't anything between you and your thief, Savior."

~?~?~?~?~

_The Plaza Hotel, suite booked under the name Sophie Devereaux, New York, New York_

Hook and August had the documents from the safe spread out on a table between them as Emma and Zelena sat in the sitting area, going through the contents of Cruella's phone when Mulan walked through the door, carrying two bags with the name of the sandwich shop down the street splashed across them.

"So what have you found?" she asked, dropping the bags into the center of the men's workspace, forcing them to both sit back and blink their tired eyes at her.

"Blackmail material," Hook said as August stood to stretch his back. "People like Ursula all over the country, adopting high-risk girls that nobody is going to think twice about, picking up homeless kids… the operation is enormous."

"I sort of hate to ask," Mulan said, digging through the bags and handing white boxes to both of them before turning to the girls on the sofa together, "but why don't we take this to the police. I mean… _I_ don't use them, but people do."

"Is it just blackmail?" Emma asked over her shoulder without looking away from the information on the computer screen in front of her.

"No," August said on a sigh, dropping his forehead into his hands to massage out the tension. "Bribes too. Cops, mayors, DAs in half a dozen cities."

"Who's she got in Boston?"

August sighed tiredly. "Chief of police, the mayor, and a handful of low-level cops, why?"

"Important to know what we're up against at home. Anyway, can't trust cops to investigate cops," Emma said. "Don't you watch the news?"

"As infrequently as possible," Mulan said, bringing sandwiches over to her and Zelena. "Leak it to the news?"

"No good," Hook said around a bite of sandwich. "She's got reporters and media magnates on the dole as well."

"We could," Zelena said, sounding already dubious, "just leak the information online and let the court of public opinion do its job?"

"Too slow," Emma said with a sigh, glaring at the grilled cheese sandwich that Mulan had brought her. "Cruella and Isaac would be in the wind, and so would all those girls before a real trial started. We have to cut off the head at the same time we expose them. It has to be as quick as possible." She tapped the screen in front of her. "This is how."

The entire room fell silent for several minutes as Emma began to eat her sandwich, eyes glued to her computer as she did.

"Care to share with the class?" August asked, finally. "Or have dramatic pronouncements become your modus operandi?"

Emma blinked and glanced around, looking surprised to find all eyes in the room on her.

"Sorry," she said, with a sheepish smile. "In my own head. Uh… how do I get this up on the screen?"

Zelena snorted a laugh, but reached over to tap a few buttons on Emma's computer and the screen bloomed on the wide-screen television set that had come standard in the room.

"Thanks. So Cruella's planning a party- a gala. In the most delicious of ironies, it's a charity gala for Genesis Shelters."

Zelena and Mulan both appeared to recognize the name, but Hook and August continued to look blank. Emma rolled her eyes.

"Domestic abuse shelters," she said, and the boys' faces cleared.

"Ironic is right," Mulan muttered darkly.

"August, do you think you have ingratiated yourself enough with Cruella to get an invite to this 'do?" Emma asked over her shoulder again.

Hook sniggered. "I'd say he's ingratiated. He's been sexting with her for the last two hours."

"She texted me first," August said defensively. "And it's only been sexting for the last 45 minutes."

Emma squeezed her eyes closed and shook her head. "Well there's a mental image I'll never be able to scrub from my brain. I suppose if you're that far along she won't let you bring a plus-one though. I don't like the idea of you going in alone."

"Who do you think I am?" Zelena asked. "If I can't hack a guest list for a bloody charity dinner, I'm not worth much am I? I can get us all on the list, just give me aliases, unless you'd prefer some of us were on staff."

Emma shook her head again. "We won't all be at that party, at least not initially. I have a plan."


	4. A Classic Honeytrap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Happy Friday, y'all.**
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> **So there was some serious concern about whether this chapter was going to be done in time.  It kind of came into being (along with most of chapter 5) in a single burst of inspiration on Wednesday, but that does mean there were a couple fewer days to edit.  I had several people look at it, but if there are mistakes, they are entirely mine, and I do apologize to you, my most beloved readers.**
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> **That said, Chapter 5 is the penultimate chapter, and Chapter 6 has been written for weeks, so this is a complete (or close enough as to make no difference) story!**
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>  
> 
> **If you're interested in what comes next in the writing world of Wheel, I'll have a note at the end of Ch. 6.**

_Genesis Shelters Dinner, De'Ville Tower, 5th Avenue, New York, New York_

Zelena took a tiny sip of her champagne and did another scan of the room as she calculated the cost per bottle of the drink, the number of guests on the list, the cost of the tickets, the catering, and the cut that the De'Ville foundation was undoubtedly taking for itself and its shareholders, and concluded that absolutely no money was actually going to the charity whose name was on the invitations.

It was a con, an enormous one. No wonder August looked so pleased as he flirted with Cruella. Zelena had already noted every on-duty guard and off-duty police officer currently in the hobnobbing crowd four times over, as it seemed clear that August wasn't watching out for himself.

"I have no idea why I have to be at this absurd bean-feast watching dear Oggie's back. I know what Captain Tightpants and the Humourless Wonder are doing out there, but you should be here, Savior, not me."

"First-" Emma's voice sounded in her ear as though she were standing beside her rather than on the other side of town. Honestly, the comms were pretty brilliant, "-you look better in eveningwear than I do."

Zelena snorted. "Bet your pretty thief doesn't think so."

"Lovely as you are, my dear, I do only have eyes for our Swan." Hook's voice was low, he was obviously working, but could never turn down an opportunity for _bon mot_. Zelena could sympathize with that, if nothing else.

"Second," Emma continued, ignoring this, "I carry a gun."

"I could carry a gun," Zelena complained.

"Legally," Emma added.

"If you're going to quibble about legalities, my pretty, we'll be here all day."

"Skillfully then."

"You know," Zelena said, with another sip of her drink, starting to enjoy herself, "it's very presumptuous of you to assume I haven't spent my entire life firing a gun. Might very well even have a license, you'd hardly know."

"Do you have one, Zelena?"

"Well no, but I could have done. You never bothered to ask."

"Is this really the argument we will insist on having?" Hook asked, sounding annoyed. "We are out in the rain while you enjoy the benefactory excesses of our victim. Do hush and enjoy the _vol au vent_ so I can concentrate, be a dear."

It was true, and Zelena knew it. Cruella was unlikely to open fire in her glittering ballroom, and while the proximity to so many politicians and police might make Zelena's skin crawl, she was also safe in the knowledge that all of her crimes had been committed from behind her hacker handle and the anonymity of a computer screen.

It was in fact this that made her as nervous as she was. She wasn't used to being exposed. It felt as though someone were breathing down her neck.

"Do my eyes deceive me? It can't possibly be Zelena Undertown, can it?"

~?~?~?~?~

_Warehouse District, New York, New York_

"Zelena, who's that? Zelena?"

"Shut up, Swan," Mulan hissed, glaring into the greasy, rain-drenched dark around them as Emma's pet thief manipulated that weird tool he wore on his left arm in the lock. Emma and her gun covered Mulan's six, and the pair of them were protecting Hook as he got them into the building. Not the one the girls were in, but the one next door.

"Someone called Zelena… I need to know if we're blown," Emma muttered. She was jumpy as hell, and Mulan had asked if she should be carrying a firearm, which implied criticism had been met with a chilly jade glare and no other response.

"Excuse me." August's voice was smooth as whiskey- a con artist's voice. "I need a fresh drink, can I bring you something?" After a moment, he spoke again, voice changed into something closer to his normal tones, if whispering. "If we're blown, I'll get us out."

"Do I continue?" Hook asked. "Or are we off to be the cavalry?"

Emma sighed. "If we're blown we're blown, I'm not letting these girls go another day here."

"Convenient, that, as I'd just gotten the lock undone."

Mulan felt her jaw clench. She wasn't sure what to make of the pretty thief. He was quick with a lock, she'd give him that, and she'd heard of his reputation. She found his hook a little bit unsettling, but could see the benefit as he had switched from one tool to another in quick succession, first to expose the electricals on the alarm system, then to snip the appropriate wires, then to pick the locks on the actual door- it was clear he was very good at his job. The trouble was that he was also a flamboyant flirt, too witty by half, and seemed to take nothing seriously.

Hook opened the door and stood back, seeming to understand his place in the trio. Emma stepped forward first toward the door, but Mulan reached out a hand to stop her.

"Me first," she said, without elaborating, and entered.

As she crossed the threshold, Mulan removed the comm from her ear- she was largely able to tune out August ordering a drink, and Zelena talking to someone about what her name was and was not, but in this moment, Mulan needed to close her eyes, hold her breath, and just _listen_.

The entire block and all its buildings were owned by De'Ville Corp. and its interests. For hours in the loft above The Rabbit Hole, Zelena and Hook had wrestled with the Gordian knot of the security system and guard structure of the house where the girls were being kept, only for the problem to fall to the blade of Emma Swan's mind:

The security system in the girls' house was necessarily bottom-heavy, so coming in from the top was the safest way to get through. Mulan had pictured a helicopter hovering over the house- hardly a stealthy way in- but Emma had placed a finger on the map to the left of their goal and tapped the pictogram of an old warehouse.

"What's the security like on this place?"

Zelena had pulled up the specs and, to everyone's surprise but Emma, the place's alarm system was so simplistic, it might as well not have one.

It would be too much to hope it was completely unguarded, however, and that was what Mulan listened for- the distinctive heavy-footfall of a security guard.

She blocked out the breathing of her companions, the hiss of the rain on the pavement outside, the low hum of traffic, the susurrus of the water in the Hudson nearby, even her own heartbeat, and listened with all her might.

And there is was- the slow, steady step of a night watchman. The step wasn't heavy enough to indicate a steel-toed boot or an assault weapon, so Mulan knew that this was more likely a rent-a-cop than a member of De'Ville's private goon squad. Armed though. His step sounded like he was armed. It was a very distinctive step.

"Swan?" Mulan said, loud enough to be sure she roused the guard, "Have I ever told you why I don't like guns?"

The steps hurried, and Mulan was glad that his instinct hadn't been to call for help, either aloud or by radio. It meant there wasn't likely another guard, and that the man was going to underestimate her.

"Uh… no," Swan said, and she sounded uncertain, though apparently willing enough to play along with whatever Mulan's game was. Mulan heard a shuffle and guessed that Emma was moving the burglar behind herself and her weapon. "Why don't you like guns?"

The man appeared, no more than three yards from where Mulan was, handgun up and trained in their direction, though not at any of them as he hadn't had time to adjust his aim.

"Guns have a minimum effective distance."

Mulan sprinted toward him and, before he could react properly, was on top of him, his wrist in her hand, brought down across her knee. She could feel the bone creak, and he cried out and dropped his gun immediately. Her next two punches went one into his kidneys, and one into his solar plexus, which took him to his knees. She brought her knee up to his face, once he was down, and felt the satisfying crunch of bone as his nose broke against her patella. He was on the ground whimpering before he'd ever have gotten off a shot.

~?~?~?~?~

_Genesis Shelters Dinner, De'Ville Tower, 5th Avenue, New York, New York_

"I haven't been Undertown in years." Zelena's voice sounded in August's ear as though she were in the next seat at the bar rather than across the room. Her spine, from where he watched her, was as straight and tense as if it had been replaced with a broomstick. "It's just Zelena now."

"Just Zelena?" The other man's voice was more muffled through the comm, but August could hear him as well. He squinted across the room, the man's face was in profile and at a distance, but August didn't think he'd ever seen it before. "What, like Cher or Madonna?"

"Like _Zelena_ who doesn't bloody need a surname."

August lifted his glass to his lips automatically, only to realize it was empty, which was the reason he was standing at the bar in the first place.

"Amaretto sour," he said to the bartender without taking his eyes off Zelena and her conversant. "And a scotch on the rocks, single-malt if you've got it."

"You used to need a surname," the man said, insinuatingly.

"I used to need nappies and a cup with a lid that didn't spill. I've grown up a bit since then."

"You know," a voice said at August's shoulder, making him jump, "if I didn't know any better, I'd be rather jealous Eliot, darling. You haven't taken your eyes off that woman since you left me."

In the time it took August to look away from Zelena and her friend and meet Cruella's eyes, his entire persona had changed from calculating grifter August Booth to lovesick swain Eliot Spencer.

"No need to be jealous," he said, his voice a half-step lower than was natural for him, and the barest hint of a southern accent softening his vowels, "I wasn't looking at the lady. I could swear I know that man from somewhere… is he a politician?"

Cruella picked up her amaretto sour as the bartender set it down, sipping as she glanced over at the pair with a bored air.

"Greg Undertown?" she asked. "No, I don't think you'd know him from anywhere. He works for me." She leaned close with a conspiratorial air. "He's a rather famous hacker. Used to work for Edward Snowden, in fact. Now he runs my IT department." She seemed pleased to have caged such a rare bird.

"Undertown-" August murmured. It was the name he'd called Zelena, and she'd said she didn't use anymore, and he was a hacker, which could mean- "-you're right. Never heard of him."

It was a walk-away job, August reminded himself. He didn't want to know more about these people than absolutely necessary to keep them all alive and get them paid.

He picked up his drink and turned his character's slow, charming smile on his mark. "So tell me, Ellie," he said- nickname to increase feelings of intimacy, the cold grifter in his mind seemed to explain- "how would you say your little 'do is going?"

Cruella was always quick to self-congratulate, fortunately, and was completely distracted by August's tactic.

"Oh it's just smashing, darling. The mayor came, and the governor of New Jersey. That Broadway actor that everyone is so excited over these days came as well, and the one from that science fiction show? You know the one- he's British. Really, the turnout is everything that we hoped for."

"And the charity will have a nice big payoff at the end of the night?"

Cruella shrugged, and took a sip of her drink. "There is a cheque-presentation ceremony after the speeches," she said, obviously less interested in this than the celebrity of her guest list.

It gave August an odd twist in the gut to realize that he was the same, if not worse. At least the charity that Cruella was ostensibly supporting existed, and might get some benefit from the additional press the gala generated.

He took a larger-than-normal gulp of his drink, hoping to quell the feeling with alcohol.

Isaac joined them, looking strange in formal dress, his heavy eyebrows drawn into a single line over the bridge of his nose.

"Eliot," he said with a polite nod before turning to his boss. "Cruella, do you know who that woman Greg is talking to is?"

Cruella blinked in surprise. "No. Should I?"

Isaac's thin lips went even thinner in annoyance. "Yes, Cruella, you should. Or I should. We vetted every person on the guest list ahead of time. If I don't know who she is- and I don't- then you should."

"Are you sure?" August asked, able to feel the threads of the plan beginning to unravel. "Couldn't she be somebody's plus-one?"

Isaac shook his head. "The invitations didn't include an open-ended plus-one. Everyone at this event was vetted. She's not supposed to be here." Isaac met Cruella's eyes, and both of their faces were set in harsh, ruthless lines.

"Let's go speak to her," Cruella said, smiling nastily. "Come along, Eliot. This should be fun."

August's gut seemed to turn to ice.

~?~?~?~?~

_Warehouse District, New York, New York_

"August, get Zelena and get out of there," Emma said softly. "We'll get the girls and run. Get out of New York. We'll meet back up at the Rabbit Hole a week from tonight."

Killian tightened the line they would be using to cross over the gap between the two buildings as he listened. The sensible thief in his mind shouted at him to wrap it all up and run. Go to ground now before things got even more out of control. He didn't consider himself a coward, necessarily, and he knew most people thought his antics mad, but Killian had always known when to cut his losses and run, and everything in him said that now was the time.

And yet, he continued to work as though he would move forward. Throw himself off the roof and into more danger than he'd ever placed himself. Because Emma Swan, Savior, had asked it of him.

He didn't want to think about why.

Mulan snatched the first harness he took from his bag out of his hand as soon as she could and began clipping it into place across her torso with efficient movements.

"I'll be going first," she said, not acknowledging- at least out loud- the possibility that this was a terrible idea. "I'll give you a signal when I've scouted the area and you can come over. You'll be first, then Swan."

"Aye," Killian said softly, clipping her onto the line.

Emma nodded, her brow creased with worry, and her eyes distracted, clearly thinking about what was happening across town.

"Hey, Swan," Mulan hissed sharply. "We need you focussed. If you're here you need to _be_ here. August and Zelena have been watching their own backs for a long time."

"It's my plan," Emma said, still frowning. "I'm the one who sent them into danger."

"Yeah," Mulan agreed, "but us too. Part of being a leader is trusting your team, and the time has come to do that. Hook and I need your undivided attention."

"Hello Greg, darling." They all heard Cruella's voice over their comms. "Do introduce us to your lovely friend."

Emma's lips went thin but she shook her head, apparently to clear it, and met Mulan's eyes for a moment, then Killian's for a longer one.

"Let's go save those girls."

The three of them nodded and Mulan stepped to the edge of the roof where Killian began to clip her to their line.

"This has been tested?" she asked, sounding just a touch shaky.

"Oh aye, I throw myself about all the time and you're much smaller than I am. Hold here and here," he said, setting her hands where they belonged. "It'll keep you from spinning in the air. Keep your legs out in front so you can catch yourself on the other side- the slope is gradual enough that you shouldn't travel too fast, but brace anyway, aye?"

"I'm not an idiot," Mulan said, irritably.

"I never said you were, but when was the last time you jumped off a building?"

"Two weeks ago. You were there."

He grinned. "Was I your first, Love?"

She glared at him. "Shut up," she said, then launched herself off the roof, trusting to gravity and Hook's designs to keep her aloft.

"You shouldn't antagonize her like that," Emma said, softly. "She doesn't like men."

"I hardly need you to point out the obvious, but when she's annoyed with me she can't be afraid of the fall."

"You know I can hear you, right?" Mulan asked after a soft grunt made it clear she'd landed.

"Your beloved conman could explain the psychology behind it," Killian continued, ignoring Mulan. Even he was surprised at the slight bitterness in his tone as he spoke.

"August and I knew each other in the foster system when we were kids. That's all that's between us," Emma said, answering the sentiment if not the words.

"Is it?" he said, somehow managing to infuse the words with both skepticism and hope.

"We're clear," Mulan said over the comm.

Killian stepped up to the edge of the building and clipped himself to the line, then turned and gave Emma a smile that flashed in the dark.

"In that case, perhaps you wouldn't be averse to a little kiss for luck?"

She took a second, as though thinking, then, to his surprise, she stepped up to him. She was close, almost close enough to touch, but not quite doing so. Killian licked his lips nervously as she tilted her face up to him and his heart started beating double-time. He hadn't expected her to actually-

"Who needs luck?" Swan asked as she shoved him off the roof.

~?~?~?~?~

_Genesis Shelters Dinner, De'Ville Tower, 5th Avenue, New York, New York_

Zelena and August winced identically as a surprised yelp echoed in both of their ears.

Fortunately for them, no one was looking at August, and Isaac had been shaking Zelena's hand, squeezing as tightly as possible in an unambiguous power move.

"Zelena…" Isaac said, clearly waiting for a surname. Greg had just introduced her to his bosses.

"That's right," she said, baring her teeth at him in something that might, under certain circumstances, be mistaken for a smile.

Isaac let go of her hand and took a small step back from that look. He cleared his throat nervously and continued.

"It's just great to meet you. Only it's strange, you see, I was responsible for the guest list for this little shindig, and I can't say I remember you being on it. I'm sure I'd remember a name like Zelena."

She saw August tense out of the corner of her eye, but there was nothing she could do to calm him. She couldn't even pretend to notice him- they were complete strangers, after all.

"I was invited by the charity," she answered, her voice smooth. "They send invitations to all of their top donors, and _I_ am their top donor."

Isaac's eyebrows shot up, and he glanced over her quickly, apparently reassessing her.

Zelena knew she looked the part in shimmering green silk, topped with emeralds. The dress clung to her every curve in such a way that most men would hardly even notice the jewels, which were real, spectacular, and not her own. Hook had vanished for two hours and arrived back at the suite with a selection of jewelry, the provenance of which he would not answer to, save to promise Emma that he had not been 'freelancing.'

"Are you?" Isaac asked, radiating skepticism. "Well then, I'm sure you've been looking for Ashley. She'll have been the one who invited you."

He reached and wrapped his hand around her upper arm, fingers digging into her bicep, a cold, dangerous look in his eyes.

Zelena recognized that look in a man's eyes, and jerked her arm away from him, even as a scared, desperate version of her own voice shouted at her not to make him angry.

"Don't. Touch. Me," she spat, her voice older, harder, and more dangerous than the one still weeping in the back of her mind.

Isaac stepped back again, well and truly intimidated this time, but Cruella stepped in. She seemed to have no fear of Zelena, who remembered suddenly that this woman tormented and imprisoned women all over the country.

Cruella gave Zelena a look which showed her teeth and might not have been out of place on a prowling jungle cat.

"Now, now, Isaac, there is no need to be physical. Zelena will come along with us, won't you, Darling? And if Ashley doesn't know her, the District Attorney of New York is here, he can tell us what can be done with her."

"You'd get the DA involved with a little party crashing?" August asked, so on-edge that he seemed to have forgotten his character's voice for an instant.

"She got in with someone's name," Cruella said, nastily, still looking at Zelena like she might enjoy watching her ripped to shreds. "Identity theft is a federal crime, after all." She turned back to him and patted his arm. "But don't you worry your pretty head, Eliot, darling."

"I see Ashley right over there," Isaac said, pointing. "Let's go speak to her, shall we?"

The group fell into formation- August and Cruella taking the lead, arms linked, Zelena and Greg in the middle, and Isaac taking up the rear, watching to be sure Zelena did not run. August glanced back at Zelena once, but she gave him the tiniest shake of her head, and he turned his eyes forward again, character's mask back in place.

"Do you need help?" Greg whispered, leaning down to her ear.

Zelena jerked away from him and shuddered with reaction to his nearness. "Not from you," she bit off.

"Zelena, these people will hurt you. Let me-"

"I don't need help from you or anyone," she said, clearly enough to be heard by her enemies. "I've done nothing wrong."

Even without being told, Zelena would have known that Ashley was practically a different species than Cruella or Isaac by looking at her. She was perfectly pretty, but her dress was obviously rented, and her nails, hair, and makeup had not been managed in a salon. She seemed uncomfortable with the glamour surrounding her, and picked at the paint on her nails, clearly wishing that she had something to do. She watched the waiters almost enviously as they moved through the crowd.

She turned and clearly caught sight of the group moving toward her and her sweet social smile froze as her eyes went wide.

As the group fanned out around her, Zelena could see that the poor thing was ready to bolt like a rabbit, and had a guess as to why this woman had chosen to work for a charity that served victims of domestic violence.

"Ashley, darling," Cruella said, voice brimming over with false cheer. "I found someone I thought you must be looking for," she said, gesturing dramatically toward Zelena and grinning that shark's grin of hers.

Ashley gave Zelena a sweet, if blank smile, and offered a hand.

"I don't believe we've met," she said, and Isaac's face went triumphant. "I'm Ashley with Genesis Shelters. And you are?"

Zelena took a deep breath. Her gut felt as though there were a thousand wriggling things inside of it. She wasn't entirely certain that her scheme would work, but it was all she had.

She took Ashley's hand in her own and smiled. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Ashley, though I feel I know you already. I'm Zelena."

~?~?~?~?~

_Warehouse District, New York, New York_

Mulan and Emma's eyes met over the body of the guard they were trussing in duct tape.

"Does she know something we don't know?" Mulan asked.

Emma said nothing, only aggressively pressed the tape over the mouth of the unconscious man on the ground. For all her sharp, annoyed movements, Mulan noted that she was careful not to cover his nose at all.

For the first two storeys, they had been lucky, and hadn't run across any guards. On the third floor, their luck had run out and there had been three, clustered, chatting around a single door.

Mulan didn't like guns for their limited effective range, and also their tendency to be loud and messy, alerting everyone nearby where you were.

It seemed, however, that Emma had known this, and a pistol used as a bludgeon was a remarkably effective weapon at close range, and quiet as well.

Emma and Mulan had managed the muscle, yet again, and Hook had taken the door.

"Zelena's always the smartest person in any room she's in," Mulan said, hoping to soothe Emma's ego. "She doesn't really trust people, you know? She might not tell you everything."

Emma continued to be silent as she pushed herself to her feet, dusting off her knees from the filthy floor.

Mulan opened her mouth to speak again- really, Emma's silence was worrying- when there was a click from across the hall.

"We're in," Hook said quietly, reaching for the handle.

"Stop," Emma said. She wasn't loud, but Hook's hand stopped as though she'd cast a spell on him. "I'll go in first."

"I-" Mulan started, but Emma raised a hand, cutting her off. She closed her mouth with a snap.

Emma handed Hook her gun. He looked down at it in his hand, then looked up at Mulan, shock writ clear over his face as Emma stood unarmed before the door.

"Emma-" Mulan began, but she'd already pushed the door open and stepped into the unknown room.

"Who are you?" The voice was scared, angry, and female.

"Are you with the police?" This voice was scared, hopeful, and female.

"Or with _them_?" Scared, suspicious, and female.

"My name is Emma," Emma said, and this was a timbre of her voice that Mulan had yet to hear, soft, gentle, almost maternal. "I'm not with the police, and I'm not with the De'Villes. I'm here to help."

~?~?~?~?~

_Genesis Shelters Dinner, De'Ville Tower, 5th Avenue, New York, New York_

Ashley's mouth fell open at Zelena's name.

"Zelena?" she said, staring at her as though at a vision or a ghost. " _You're_ Zelena?" A shocked, thrilled little smile began to grow over her pretty face. "But… I never thought you'd come to one of these! They said you never come!"

August blinked, his mouth falling open in absolute shock. Fortunately, this seemed to be going around: Isaac and Cruella looked equally dumbfounded. Greg was watching Zelena and Ashley with a calculating glare.

"You know her?" Isaac asked, though it seemed obvious that she did.

"Well we've never met," Ashley said, happily, "but everyone at Genesis Shelters knows Zelena. She's been almost single handedly keeping us running for… it has to be six years now! She's our top donor."

"And…" Isaac said, looking as though he had been pricked with a pin and was slowly deflating, "you invited her?"

"We always invite our top donors, but we never imagined Zelena would come. I'm so glad you brought her to speak with me!" She reached out and wrapped her left hand around Zelena's. "Do you mind… could I steal you for a few minutes? Tell you all about what's happening with Genesis? I'm sure you read our newsletters but… I'd just love to speak with you!"

Zelena smiled and August was surprised to find that it appeared to be a real, honest smile, neither forced nor painful.

"I'd absolutely love to, Ashley. Are you hungry? We should get something to eat. Come along, my dear."

And with that, Zelena led the other woman away from the shocked company.

August continued to listen to her talk, half expecting that Ashley was in on Zelena's con, but it sounded like she was exactly what she appeared to be, and that Zelena was, strangely enough, telling the truth.

It baffled him completely.

Isaac and Greg took their leave of August and Cruella after only a moment longer, and even they found their conversation was suddenly stilted and difficult and when he made an excuse to leave her side, she made no objections.

~?~?~?~?~

Two hours later, as the master of ceremonies announced the first speaker of the night, sixteen women filed up to the podium from backstage.

They were all between 16 and 25, nearly all black and hispanic, with two white women with heavy Eastern-European accents. They all had the look of people who had been scared and hungry, and desperate for so long that they wear that situation like a cloak. They did not wear evening dresses, but tattered clothing that looked like it might have come from a lost-and-found at a homeless shelter.

One woman stepped forward. She was tall and thin- not model-slim, but half-starved. Her dark eyes looked out of her dark face and no one in the audience seemed able to breathe. These women did not belong here, and yet no one could seem to find the ability to tell them to go.

The woman raised her hand, her index finger extended and pointed to the back of the audience.

"That woman, and that man," she said, her voice projecting like a bell through that silent room, "stole us, carried us away, and kept us locked up until she could make use of us."

Every eye followed her finger to where she pointed at Cruella De'Ville and Isaac Heller, standing together, apparently petrified as everyone else.

No one thought to look for them until much later, after arrests had been made and interrogations begun, after federal officers began tearing apart official offices and records, and unofficial offices and records, but Eliot Spencer, Cruella's date for the night and Zelena, top donor to Genesis Shelters had already vanished in that moment.


	5. Going Straight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **If you're wondering what comes after this story, I'm hoping to have a new one based on the Mummy ready in time for the winter. I'm also hoping to have the next two stories in my Gilmore Girls 'verse ready by the end of the summer. The next story in this 'verse will probably be sometime early next year if all goes well.**
> 
> **For all of my American readers, I hope you had a happy Fourth of July, and that your animals have since forgiven you.**

Emma sat on the sofa in the hotel suite, staring blankly into space. Her comm sat on a table across the room, too far to hear what was happening to her team.

Ava Zimmer slept wrapped in one of the blankets from the bed, curled into a ball with her head pillowed on Emma's lap as Emma gently stroked her fingers through the girl's hair.

_The room was dark and rustling, and Emma could feel the press of people around her- too many for a space that small, smelling unwashed and fearful. It reminded her painfully of prison._

" _Who are you?"_

_Emma's eyes found the woman who had spoken. She was tall and unhealthily skinny, with skin so dark it glowed almost blue in the dim light and her eyes might have been holes in space._

" _Are you with the police?"_

_This woman had a heavy Eastern-European accent. Her hair was dark and the light bounced off of high cheekbones and glinted on narrow eyes._

" _Or are you with… them?"_

_This one couldn't be twenty years old. She had smooth light-brown skin and glossy black hair, and the sort of perfect beauty that only a twenty-year-old can claim._

" _My name is Emma." She directed her answers to the first woman who had spoken who, more than anyone else in the room, carried an air of authority. She was not the oldest woman there, nor the most beautiful, nor did she appear to be physically the strongest, thin as she was, but Emma could see the other women looking to her surreptitiously, as though taking cues from her._

" _I'm not with the police, or the De'Ville's. I'm here to help."_

" _Help who?" the woman asked._

_Emma glanced around at the women in the room. There were about a dozen of them, mostly black or dark-skinned. The two obviously white women had subtly slavic features, and one was whispering to the other as though translating. The youngest woman might be sixteen, and the oldest wasn't more than 25._

" _I was sent by a man named Michael Zimmer-" there was a slight shifting among the women at that name and Emma's stomach seemed to leap into her throat. "Well… not Michael as much as his son, Nick."_

" _Nick?"_

_The voice was high and quiet and almost-but-not-quite a sob._

" _Yeah, Nick," Emma said, keeping her voice low and soft in spite of the way her heartbeat had picked up. "He sent me looking for his sister, Ava."_

_This time the shift was more pronounced, though the source of the voice was not revealed. The tall woman's eyes narrowed slightly._

" _You've come to take Ava away?" she asked, her voice hard._

_Emma hesitated for a moment. She didn't know what to expect from these women- whether they were scared, malleable, hard, brittle, angry, guilty, or any of a thousand other things they might be feeling and thinking in that moment. Of all of the parts of this heist, this was the one she hadn't been able to plan in advance._

" _I want to take you all away," she said, meeting the tall woman's eyes straight on, her chin high and eyes serious. "If you want, I'll get every last one of you out the door right now. I know some people who can help you get documents, if you need them. I can get you on a bus or a plane to anywhere you want to go. Hell, I can steal a car for you if you want, or if I can't, I know a guy who can." She could hear Hook outside the door even in that moment, and knew that Mulan wasn't far._

" _I was hired to come get Ava, but I'm not leaving anyone behind. Is she here?"_

_Emma knew she was, but the crowd parted to reveal her. They had hidden her away behind them, a wall protecting her._

_Emma had never seen her face in real life, only in photographs. She was prettier in person, even with her hair matted and snarled, her cheeks hollowed, and her eyes frightened. She would be impossibly lovely when she was an adult._

_She stepped forward, and Emma dropped to her knees to greet her. After a second's hesitation, in which Ava looked up at the tall woman who appeared to give her a nod, she raced to Emma, wrapping herself around her and falling apart into a weeping mess._

_Emma held her, trusting to instinct rather than knowledge. She'd spent little enough time with children in her life, but it was clear that Ava needed something, and she was going to be the only one who could provide it._

_After a few minutes, Ava quieted but did not let go, only relaxed against Emma's body seemingly exhausted._

_Rather than stop holding her, Emma adjusted her grip on the girl and stood, lifting the heavy body and meeting the tall woman's eyes again._

" _What if we don't want to just run?" the woman asked, and for the first time there was a breath of warmth in her voice. "What if we want revenge for what was done to us?"_

_Emma looked at the other women. It did not appear to be general agreement that revenge was what was wanted, but she had a feeling that if this woman agreed to it, the rest would fall in line._

" _It would be very hard," Emma said. She didn't lie. She couldn't, looking into those deep, dark eyes. "It would expose you to their retribution, potentially, and it would take a long time. I know some people-" people on both sides of the law she'd met in her time as The Savior, "-who would be able to help you, but even with their help it wouldn't be easy."_

" _But?"_

" _But if you did, you'd set free all of the other houses like this, and keep it from happening to other girls. Like you. Like Ava."_

Her name was Hope. Emma hadn't asked if her name had been Hope before she'd run afoul of Cruella's cruel practices or if that had come later. Regardless, she had agreed to it on the sole condition that Ava not be involved.

"Ava goes home," she'd said on no uncertain terms. "She goes back to her daddy and brother, and she never has to think about this again."

The women had gone with Hook and Mulan, Hook to get them into the Gala to present their accusations in front of the power of the city, the media, and the police, and Mulan to be sure no harm came to them. Emma had promised.

Emma and Ava had gone back to the hotel. The girl had been silent the entire time, but had clung to Emma like a limpet. When Emma had suggested she could make use of the shower, her eyes had gone wide and her face white until Emma had promised to remain just outside the door.

"You don't even have to shut it all the way if you don't want," she'd promised. "I won't leave you alone."

Once she was clean, Emma had combed her hair for her, and it had barely taken the time to wrap her in blankets before she was asleep, still touching Emma, as though afraid she might disappear if she stopped.

The suite door opened and Emma felt Ava stiffen against her. The child didn't move, however, as Zelena came in.

"It's done," Zelena said, flopping into a chair across from Emma. Her eyes drifted over Ava, but she said nothing. "The Feds have descended."

"Is Hope okay?" Emma asked, keeping her voice low to avoid disturbing Ava further.

"Hope?"

"Tall, black woman, very skinny? Big eyes?"

"The leader. Yeah, she's fine. Keeping the other women in line. Taking care of them." Zelena hesitated for a moment, then continued. "The authorities got there a lot faster than they should have."

Emma gave her a small smile. "I made a few calls on my way back here."

"You have interesting friends, Savior."

The two fell quiet for long enough that Emma could feel Ava relaxing against her again.

After a time, Emma met the other woman's eyes again. "Your friend," she said, which made Zelena still, "he going to be a problem for you?"

"No," she said, too quickly.

"You're lying."

Zelena gave her an odd half-smile. "I'd always assumed that legend wasn't true. The one about how you can hear a lie."

"Even if it isn't, it was a pretty obvious lie."

Zelena sighed. "He doesn't know anything about you or the others. He'll only be my problem."

"If you need help-"

"A walk-away, Savior. Remember?"

Emma closed her mouth with a snap.

"You could have told me you had an 'in' at the gala," she said instead.

Zelena smiled. "I said I could get on any guest list. I didn't say I wasn't already on it."

Emma shook her head, but couldn't help but smile back.

"That's her then," Zelena said, nodding at Ava who had nearly fallen back asleep on Emma's lap. "The girl who started it all? She's pretty."

The suite door opened again, and Mulan entered. Ava only twitched this time.

"ACLU and some other advocacy organizations showed up within 20 minutes, ready to take their cases," she said in lieu of a hello.

Zelena raised an eyebrow at Emma. "A few calls?"

"I know a lot of people," Emma said.

"This from a woman who had no friends before she met us," Zelena said.

"I have friends."

Both Mulan and Zelena stared at her in open disbelief.

"What?"

"Swan, I've spent most of the last three weeks with you almost constantly. I'd have noticed if you had friends," Zelena said.

Mulan didn't say anything, but her face indicated that she was on Zelena's side of the argument.

Emma was spared having to say more by August and Hook returning together. August nodded at the group and took a chair, while Hook sat on the sofa on the other side of Ava, gently running a hand over her blonde curls. She didn't move, finally deeply asleep.

"I've returned your jewels to their rightful place," Hook said with a nod to Zelena.

"Which is where?" Emma asked.

He didn't answer, just gave her a knowing smile.

"So we head back to Boston tomorrow?" August asked, glancing around. "The job is finished?"

"I've already booked tickets using the aliases you all gave me," Zelena said.

"And what about getting paid?"

"I'll have to do a bit of magic on De'Ville's accounts, but I should be able to get you the money within a week. If you give me an account, I can transfer it straight in."

"If you think I'm giving my bank account number to the best cyber-thief on the eastern seaboard-" Mulan began.

"Try the whole bloody country," Zelena interrupted.

Emma found that the conversation flowed around her without seeming to enter her brain. She watched Hook stroke Ava's hair as though the way his fingers vanished and reappeared in the blonde curls were the most fascinating thing she had ever seen. He had a gentle way about him. When he found a tangle, he never pulled, only loosened the snag with those deft fingers.

"You're asleep sitting up, Swan," he said, his voice low as August, Zelena, and Mulan continued to argue about where and when they would exchange their final payoff. "You should away to bed. You and this wee beauty here. It's been a long day for you both."

He stood from the sofa and, without Emma asking, bent to scoop Ava into his arms.

"Come along then, Lass," he murmured.

She woke as he moved her and went suddenly as tense and terrified as a deer in headlights, though she remained as silent as she had been all night.

"Hey," Emma said, jumping up and moving over to her so she could be seen. "Hey sweetheart. It's alright. He's my friend. His name is Ho-"

"Killian," he interrupted, setting the child down and letting her lean into Emma's side again. He offered her his hand to shake. "Killian Jones," he said gravely. "Your servant."

Ava regarded him warily for a moment, but finally took his hand for a brief shake.

"I was going to let you sleep in the bed where our conversation wouldn't bother you," Emma said, running a hand over Ava's hair again.

She turned her face into Emma's side and shook her head, wrapping her arms around Emma's waist and hanging on as though for dear life.

"Hush," Emma murmured, hugging her back. "Do you want me to stay with you?"

Ava nodded, face still hidden. She gripped Emma even tighter, as though she might climb up her. Emma thought she was too old to want to be held so, but she'd been through something horrible.

"Do you mind if Ho-" She stopped and glanced at him. "If Killian helps? I can carry you if you want, but I'll need his hand in getting the bed ready and all."

Ava peeked out from Emma's side to look at Killian again. He smiled at her and winked. "A hand is about all I can offer," he said, holding up the hook on his left side- sometime between leaving the girls' house and arriving back at the hotel, he'd exchanged it for the ordinary one. "I can sing you a lullaby, if you like?"

Ava seemed to consider this for a moment then nodded. Emma picked her up and Killian trailed them into the bedroom. At her instruction, Killian dug in Emma's bag and withdrew an oversized t-shirt for Ava. Emma sent her into the bathroom to brush her teeth and change for bed.

"I'll be right here," Emma said, pointing to the bed. "I'm not going anywhere."

She knew Ava wouldn't let her vanish into the bathroom to change herself, so with a shrug Emma stripped off her own clothes and changed quickly into her pajamas.

She heard a sharp intake of breath from Killian, then a quick rustle of clothes. Emma glanced over her shoulder to find him standing with his back to her, spine straight as a soldier. She just smiled and shook her head.

"Why," she heard him muttering to himself, "am I looking away?"

Emma chuckled but did not answer.

Ava returned to the room, and Emma folded down the blanket on the bed for her to climb in.

"I'm just going to brush my hair," Emma said when Ava turned expectant eyes to her. "Ho- Killian promised you a song, remember?"

Ava nodded and Emma ducked into the bathroom for half a second while Killian settled on the edge of the bed with her.

"Close your eyes, Little Love," he murmured, smoothing the blankets up under her chin.

Emma leaned against the door to the bathroom as she watched him. He cleared his throat and, totally unselfconsciously, began to sing.

"Too-la-roo-la-roo-lal, too-la-roo-la-li," he crooned softly, and Emma smiled. He wasn't Bing Crosby, but he had a sweet voice and Ava seemed to find it soothing.

"Over in Killarney, many years ago

My mother sang a song for me, in tones so sweet and low.

Just a simple little ditty, in her good old Irish way

And I'd give the world if she could sing that song to me today."

By the time he'd reached the second chorus, Ava's eyes were closed and her breathing was deep.

"Worked like a charm," Emma murmured.

"Always did for me when I was a wee thing," Killian said softly back.

Emma could imagine him so. Small and dark-haired, with those shocking blue eyes, and long, long lashes. He'd have been heartbreakingly beautiful, and she wanted to ask him about that child in her mind, but she didn't.

A walk-away job, she told herself. A one-time thing.

"I should let you go to sleep," he said, standing up from the bed and crossing to the door.

Emma half wanted to ask him to stay, but she kept her mouth shut.

"Swan?" he said when he reached the door, not turning to look at her as he did. "You can call me Killian if you like. You don't have to keep calling me Hook."

He gave her no chance to respond to this statement as he stepped back into the sitting room, closing the bedroom door behind him.

~?~?~?~?~

_Boston Common, across the frog pond from the Carousel, one week later_

"Somehow I half expected The Savior to be too noble to get paid," Zelena said as Emma approached the bench where she was sitting.

"Don't suppose you've given much thought to how much the rent on that loft is, have you?" Emma answered. She didn't want to say how nice it was to see Zelena. It had been an oddly quiet, lonely week since New York.

"You're early," Zelena said.

Emma checked her phone. "Not by much. The others are just late," she said as she took a seat on the bench.

"There's Mulan. Military precision, per usual."

"Is she wearing a dress?" Emma asked, shocked.

"Seems to be," Zelena said, lowering her sunglasses to get a better look. "Blimey."

Mulan approached them with a curt nod rather than a hello.

"What's the occasion?" Emma asked with a vague gesture at the red sundress she was wearing.

Mulan glanced down and smoothed her hands over the skirt of her dress self-consciously. "I have a date," she said, straightening her shoulders as though expecting attack.

"Oh?" Zelena said. "Who's the lucky lady?"

"Her name is Merida," Mulan said with an oddly shy shrug. "She was in the RAF- she's Scottish."

"And I'd have figured you'd had your fill of these Brits by now," Emma said, giving Mulan a smile.

"Don't let Hook hear you say that," Zelena warned.

"No, I've had my fill of him, thanks," Mulan said.

"Not that. The Irish aren't British, and they'll tell you quite clearly where to shove it if you say they are."

"Have you got our money?" Mulan asked, bringing the conversation back to track.

"Yeah, 'course I do," Zelena said. "There's August and Hook," she added, nodding toward the two men who appeared to have met somewhere and were walking toward them.

Zelena and Emma stood, and Zelena reached into her purse for five white envelopes that she handed out to each person standing in a circle together.

Emma opened hers and blinked.

"What the-"

"Are you sure this is right?"

"Er…"

Emma said nothing, only looked up at Zelena with her eyebrows raised.

"I found Cruella's other $5 billion," she said with a grin.

August stared at the zeroes on his cheque with his mouth hanging open. "This is… this is the big one. The ultimate score."

"How did you find the money?" Emma asked.

"Once I knew Greg was in charge of her IT department, it was easy. I taught him everything he knows."

"Was this his retirement fund?"

Zelena shrugged. "Hardly matters. He's in federal custody now, along with the rest of De'Ville Corp.'s C-levels. By the time he's out, I'll be long gone."

"I could buy an island," August said.

Mulan shoved the envelope into her pocket and looked around. "So that's it then? The job's over?"

That seemed to bring everyone back to earth. Eyes met for a long moment, none of them quite sure how to say goodbye.

"Well… you all take care of yourselves," Mulan said, finally. "Goodbye then."

August was next, a nod all around and then vanishing into the beginnings of the lunchtime crowd on the Common.

"If you need-" both Emma and Zelena began at the same time, then stopped, looking awkwardly at each other.

"You won't need me," Emma said with a nod.

"You will," Zelena said, "but you flirt too much with the side of the angels for my taste. I prefer to stay wicked. So long, Captain Tightpants," she said with an airy wave to Hook as she took off.

Finally, it was just the two of them alone, neither willing to meet the other's eyes.

"This is… retire-and-go-straight money," he finally said, softly. "Join the normal world. Get a house, get married…"

"It's a walk-away job, Ki-Hook," Emma said. "I've already forgotten your name."

She turned and left, the look of hurt in his eyes burning in her gut like blue flame as she did.


	6. Better This Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **You didn't really believe I'd just leave it _there_ did you? _Now_ this one is over!**
> 
> **I don't think I'll be publishing anything new for a few weeks. (I'd been doing so well too!) Next up will hopefully be a new installment in the Where You Lead 'verse.**
> 
> **If you like this story and 'verse, however, subscribe to the "Let's Go Steal Ourselves a Happy Ending" series and you'll be the first (or third) to know when "The Comes With a Price Job" starts publishing, either early in 2018 or late in 2017.**

Emma was unsurprised to see Regina Mills' name pop up on her phone.

"I only transferred the money to Henry's college fund ten minutes ago," she said, not bothering with a hello.

Regina didn't either. "Do I want to know where the money came from?"

"Probably not, Your Honor."

Emma hadn't known, five years ago, that Regina Mills, shouting lady in her coffee shop, was Regina Mills, DA for Boston. These days she was a judge on the First Circuit Court and consciously turned a blind eye to Emma's extra-curricular activities.

"Did they deserve it?" Regina asked.

"Yeah."

Regina was a hardass, rigid and nearly brutal, but with a sense of poetic justice that suited her much better as a judge than it had as a prosecutor.

"It's a lot of money," Regina said.

"Maybe he'll want to study abroad."

"He could study in a different country every semester with what you put in there this time."

"I'm sorry, Regina, I know he's not my son I just want-"

"Oh shut up, Emma." Regina sounded annoyed. "His college fund is not the problem, I just want to know that you're not taking unnecessary risks. You were safe, weren't you?"

Emma opened her mouth to say that of course she had been, but hesitated for a fraction of a moment. Regina, of course, noticed.

"Dammit, Emma! I should get you arrested just so I know you won't end up dead alone in a ditch in Italy or something."

"It's much more likely to be the Cayman Islands," Emma corrected. Regina made an annoyed noise and Emma was quick to continue. "But you can calm down. I had a team with me this time."

That caught Regina off-guard. "You did?"

"Yeah, so no need to worry. I had someone watching my back."

"But that's good. You working with a team is… can you tell me anything about them? I suppose they're… like you, so you can't say much but… can you tell me their names?"

Emma hesitated again. "It was a walk-away job," she said, finally. "A one-time thing. I don't even remember their names."

"Emma."

"Honestly, Regina, it's for the best."

She heard her friend's sigh over the line and forcibly kept herself from echoing it. She didn't want to think about Zelena's insightful- if snarky- comments, or the way Killian had made her laugh, or how safe she had felt with Mulan at her back. It was better this way, and if she kept saying it, she might even start to believe it.

"If you insist," Regina said, sounding unconvinced. "You don't get to tell me not to worry about you though, not if you insist on going it alone. I heard from Michael. You did good work. Ava is doing much better. She likes the doctor you recommended."

Emma had provided Michael the name of a therapist and was paying the woman to give Ava the best care possible. She'd also set up trusts for both kids for college, only slightly less-well-funded than Henry's.

"You're coming to supper on Sunday?" Regina asked. "I'm making lasagna and apple turnovers and Henry has a new chapter of his book to show you."

Emma smiled, always impressed at Regina's ability to take Emma's thoroughly unconventional life and integrate it into her own conventional one. She didn't know what she'd do without the Mills to ground her. Regina worried about her almost like a mother, and Henry looked up to her even as she looked up to him- he was 15 now, smart as a whip, planning on going to school to become a social worker, writing a book, and last she'd heard was in a burgeoning romance with a classmate named Violet.

"I'll be there," she said. "Anything I can bring?" she asked, knowing Regina wouldn't take her up on it. "A salad or something?"

"Just yourself, and don't cancel this time."

Emma was rather impressed she hadn't scoffed at the idea of Emma Swan eating salad.

"I wouldn't dare."

Regina made a skeptical noise in the back of her throat. "You do know, if there's anyone you're seeing, you're welcome to-"

"There's no one," Emma said quickly, cutting her off. She had been trying hard to keep her mind from eyes the colour of the deepest seas and the feel of stubble scratching at the skin of her face.

"There's more to life than work, Emma," Regina said, though her voice was the gentlest Emma had ever heard it. "You can't save the world alone."

"I'm not saving the world, Regina. I'm not a hero. I'm a criminal."

"Sometimes you can be both."

Emma smiled. "This from a judge? I've been a bad influence on you."

"I'll have you know it's the criminal justice system that taught me that, not you, Miss Swan," Regina said, primly. Her voice warmed again after a moment. "I should go check that Henry is doing his homework, not playing video games. I'll talk to you soon? Sunday?"

"Of course. Give the kid my love."

When Regina hung up, Emma sighed into the still quiet of her condo and tried her best to relish her solitude. It was better this way, as she'd said: she had always worked alone. It gave her control, and it kept her safe.

Being alone wasn't the same as being lonely.

She'd nearly convinced herself of it when there was a knock at the door.

She opened the door to a phone shoved in her face so aggressively and close that she couldn't see the words on it. She could see the phone, however, which meant that, in spite of not being able to see around it initially, she knew precisely who was on the other end of the arm holding it- that phone was unique.

"I told you not to come here, Zelena," Emma said, stepping back so that she could see the woman standing in the doorway.

"If you wanted to keep us away, you'd move," Zelena answered, flippantly. "Are you working on this?"

"Working on what?"

Zelena shoved the phone at her again in answer, and Emma took it out of her hands reflexively. Zelena used her distraction to push into the condo.

The article up on the phone screen was one Emma had seen a few times before that week. The crown princess of Arendelle had gone missing the night before her coronation and hadn't returned. The entire European Union was up in arms over the matter as Arendelle had been awaiting only their new monarch's ascension to the throne to finalize their entrance into that august body.

"Elsa Haig," Emma murmured, looking at the photo of the missing princess. Her blonde hair was whiter, and her wide eyes were blue rather than green, but they could otherwise be sisters.

"What do you mean, 'am I working on this?'" Emma asked, finally looking up to find Zelena with her head in her refrigerator. "Working on what?"

"Finding the princess, of course," Zelena said, straightening with a half-full bottle of wine in her hand. She continued as she rummaged Emma's cabinets, "pop in, save the day, defeat the villain…" She pulled down a pair of wine glasses and set them on the counter. "You know… be The Savior."

Emma watched Zelena split the remainder of the bottle between the two glasses. "That's not what I do. People come to me, I don't go looking for trouble. I don't advertise."

Zelena carried the glasses over to her and pushed one into her hands. "I could help."

"It's not a matter of needing help, I'm just not doing it. That last job was the big one. Retire and go straight, that's what Kil- what Hook said, remember?"

"So do it pro bono, you don't need to charge anymore! You know this is right up your alley, Savior. Hell it's practically a fairy tale- missing princess, mysterious hero, all it wants is a wicked witch!"

"Zelena," Emma said on a sigh, "what are you doing here?"

Zelena wouldn't look at her. "I thought you would want to-"

"Please don't lie to me."

Zelena sighed. "I'm bored, okay? I didn't need to work even before the De'Ville job but now… That job was different. We did something I've never done before."

"What's that?"

"Good," Zelena said softly, finally meeting Emma's eyes. "We did good. I haven't done good in my entire life, and I've never bloody _helped_ someone."

Emma couldn't help but smile. "You don't need me to do good you know. Just… go do it."

"I can't though. I've got all this talent, all these brains, but left to my own devices I just… explode things mostly. You though, you've got drive and direction. You're the one who can see the bigger picture. Come on, Emma, you and me? We could do almost anything!"

Emma was saved having to respond to this by another knock at her door.

"No," she said, plucking the wine glass out of Zelena's hand. "I'm not going to Europe with you, now get out of my apartment."

"Oi!" Zelena cried, indignant, reaching to try to snatch her glass back. "Ungrateful!"

"It's _my_ wine!" Emma objected, as she went to open the door.

"Emma, you have to take me with you to Europe, it's not safe for you to go alone, you need backup," Mulan said as soon as the door opened to reveal her. She seemed to notice the glasses in Emma's hands and smiled. "For me?" she asked, plucking Zelena's glass from Emma's hand. "Thanks."

"What the bloody hell are you doing here?" Zelena cried, making Mulan- who apparently hadn't noticed her, choke on her sip of wine.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Mulan asked, glaring.

"What are either of you doing here? It was a walk away job!" Emma groaned, even as Mulan pushed past her into her apartment.

"Look, I know it seems idealistic and practically fairy-tale, but Arendelle is dangerous. There's an anti-monarchy independence movement in the Southern Isles that would put the IRA to shame. You need someone watching your back if you're going to find the future queen."

"I'm not going to Arendelle!" Emma cried as Zelena plucked the second glass of wine from her hand and took a drink from it. That was fine, she needed something harder than wine to deal with this anyway.

"Why not? It practically has your name written all over it," Mulan said as Emma started toward the kitchen and her liquor cabinet.

"See? That's what I've been saying!" Zelena said, smugly. She was prevented saying more by another knock at the door.

"The place is a damned train station," Emma muttered as she pulled down a shot glass and a bottle of rum.

"Em, I have an idea- Mulan. Zelena. What are you two doing here?"

Emma tipped back a shot as August's voice flowed into the apartment.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Mulan asked defensively.

"Uh… I came to talk to Emma. Is she here?"

"Let me guess," Zelena said, "you think our dear Savior should be finding the missing princess of Arendelle, don't you?"

"Um…" August said.

"Pour me one of those, will you, Love," came a voice from behind Emma's left shoulder.

She jumped and splashed rum all across her kitchen island as she turned to find Killian standing behind her, eyes sparkling, mouth grinning.

"How did you get in here?" she nearly shouted.

He shrugged and reached out to take the bottle of rum from her hand. "Careful love, waste of good rum that. I'll pour." He proceeded to do just that as he continued. "Now, you weren't planning on going off on an adventure without me, were you?"

Emma stared in absolute disbelief as Zelena, Mulan, and August joined them in the kitchen.

"We were supposed to be done!" she said, feeling like she was losing her grip on everything.

"Oh Love," Killian said, pushing a glass into her hand, "people like us are never 'done.' Being a thief, a grifter? That's in your blood. You can't just quit. I think it must be the same with being The Savior."

"So why not go out and be a thief or grifter or hacker? Why come back to me? You all work alone!"

"We were all good alone," Mulan said, "but together? With you guiding us? We were the best."

"I never settle for second best," Zelena added in agreement.

"Come on, Em," August said, wheedlingly, giving her a crooked grin, "don't tell me you don't kind of want to get the band back together."

Emma stared around at all of them watching her carefully, and couldn't deny the pump of pleasurable adrenaline that went through her system at the thought of diving into another adventure with them.

"I'm the leader?" she asked, with a significant glance at August, who looked away but nodded. "The plans are mine. No freelancing-" she glanced at Hook, "-no hiding important information from me-" an eyebrow raised at Zelena, "-you don't steal anything I haven't told you to steal. And we don't hurt people." Mulan's eyebrows shot up, and Emma shrugged. "We don't _kill_ people, and we don't just go around hurting people who've done nothing wrong."

This seemed to meet with everyone's agreement, and August, Zelena, and Mulan moved into the living area, making themselves at home.

"Another thing," Emma said, seeing this, "I can hardly keep four of the best thieves in Boston out of my apartment-"

"Boston?" Zelena asked, sounding offended. "Try the whole bloody hemisphere."

"-So there are some ground rules." Emma continued, ignoring this. "Wash your own dishes, don't take things out of the fridge that you didn't put in, and nobody goes up to my bedroom." She pointed up to the stairs into the loft portion of the apartment where she slept.

Zelena, Mulan, and August ignored this, and Emma imagined her future washing their dishes and buying their groceries. Killian just grinned.

"No possibility of getting special dispensation," he asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

"Not a chance," Emma said. "I don't date teammates."

"Been on a lot of teams like this?"

"Enough to know not to shit where I eat."

He shook his head. "A rather disgusting metaphor, I've always thought."

"There's your special dispensation then- you're going to stop trying to get into my pants."

Killian's look turned feral. "Do you think I've been _trying_ , Swan? Goodness no, this is all natural magnetism, not concerted effort. If I were actually _trying_ to seduce you… I don't think you could handle it."

She cocked an eyebrow, her pride pricked, in spite of her better judgement. "Maybe it's _you_ who couldn't handle it," she said, then thought better of it. "But it doesn't matter. We'll both agree we're not going to do anything-" she gestured vaguely between them, "-together. You know, beyond finding people and… everything."

"I suppose you don't want to seal the pact with a kiss?" he asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

"Here was me thinking thieves had honor."

"You wound me, Swan," he said dramatically, pressing his hand to his heart. "You cut me to the quick. Are you saying you think me dishonorable?"

"You're… what's the pirate word? Scalawag. You're a scalawag."

"Of the highest order," he agreed with a grin. "A rapscallion, a rake, and a scoundrel as well, but ever honourable and true. I never make a promise I won't keep."

"So you'll agree that we shouldn't…" Emma trailed off.

He just laughed. "Come along, Swan, Europe awaits, and it has no idea what it's in for!"


End file.
